Acrylic Tank: Crack = Junker?

[PeteLockwood]

There is, hypothetically, a possibility of getting a deal on an acrylic tank. There is, however, a "but" in the equation: it has a crack on a bottom corner.

I have not seen the crack (or tank) but I'd like to try to get opinions on whether or not there's any chance it could be repaired. If it's an absolute impossibility no matter how trivial or large the crack might be, I'll know not to pursue it. But if anyone - with experience - thinks that said tank isn't an guaranteed junker then I'd be interested to hear it..

 

[Conner]

If the crack is in a place that you could weld another piece on top of it, then I think it would be repairable. If it starts on one pane, then goes through the corner into another pane, then it might not be repairable.

 

[chesterthehero]

its always fixable... sometimes it just looks like crap once its fixed...

 

[erk419]

You could just replace the piece that is cracked.

 

[pacu mom]

If the crack is in a place that you could weld another piece on top of it, then I think it would be repairable. If it starts on one pane, then goes through the corner into another pane, then it might not be repairable.

I agree. It depends on where the crack is. Our new tank came with a crack in the floor by the corner of an overflow box. The crack was not discovered until the tank was set up several months after we received it, and it was too late to return it. The tank builder sent us two pieces of acrylic to repair the crack. With substrate or sand over the repair it wouldn't have mattered, but we were going bare floor. I thought it would look really ugly, but my husband did quite a nice repair job. In fact, it's the only "decoration" in the tank

 

[black056mtc]

i saw a 180 at a lfs that had a long crack from top to the bottom on the front panel but was fixed by something that made it look barely there at all. other than that i don't know much about how they did it.

 

[rdbrown]

It is always repairable. How it is repaired, and how it will look depends on where the crack is and what size the crack is.