faulty aga glass????

[dmopar74]

less than 1 year ago i bought a brand new 180g aga tank, perfect in every way. well it seems the front panel has aquired a spot with small bubbles in it with tiny minute stress cracks, WTF. nothing has ever banged this tank, its on a steel stand that is perfectly flat, etc...

the bubbles are the size of a pinhead, and in the surface of the glass. has anybody ever seen anything like this? i also have a 400g with this problem, but there in a perfect line like it was caused from a manufacturing defect. what pisses me off is i have had/have some perfecto tanks that have been through the ringer, and literally missing chunks of glass from dropping rocks and moving, and shiety silicone jobs from the factory, and their still going strong even though many say their inferior to aga tanks.

thoughts?

click the pics for a zoomed view.

 

[12 Volt Man]

hmm...has me a bit worried since when I bought my 150 gallon brand new, I too compared the AGA and the Perfecto tanks and the AGA tanks were far superior in build quality - thicker, even silicone, thicker glass and better trim/cross braces..the differences at least in comparing the 150g size were significant. heck, the perfecto tank not only used slightly thinner glass, but they only have one cross brace on the 150 (72") while the AGA tank has two.. of course, I bought the AGA tank (Aqueon) in a heartbeat.

if that is a stress crack of some sort, perhaps they got a bad batch of glass from their glass supplier? because in terms of craftsmanship, their tanks are top notch..

I would contact Aqueon and send them those pics and see what they say..

 

[12 Volt Man]

based on those pics, though, it looks like more of a deep scratch that an actual crack.. the bottom part is a more surface scratch and it got deeper at the top. shine a flashlight on the spot in the dark. that is a good way to see. also, can you feel an 'edge' to the mark?

 

[dmopar74]

i cannot feel an edge, but can see its at the surface. crap like this makes me wanna scream, i spend alot of damn money and time for my setups to be perfect, and all of a sudden this.

i'll send an e-mail in the next couple days to aqueon. im fed up right now.

 

[12 Volt Man]

if you can't feel an edge, its probably just a scratch. a fine scratch like it is at the bottom is very hard to feel with a finger nail. cracks look different than what you are showing in the pics.

 

[dmopar74]

ok took a better look and feel. the main part is not even 1/4" in length and i can feel it, the rest not so much. i'll keep an eye on it.

i'll try and get pics of my 400, its the same thing but a 1000 times worse.

 

[12 Volt Man]

I think its most definately a scratch. you are not going to have multiple tanks all with hairline cracks in them. but its easy to have multiple tanks with scratches. they happen.

 

[dmopar74]

well i cant get pics of the 400s cracks, but the 400 has most deff have hairline cracks.

 

[12 Volt Man]

are you sure? glass with hairline cracks with that kind of weight and pressure from 4000 pounds of water/decor would not be holding up. I am skeptical

 

[dmopar74]

its empty, but heres the best i can do. see those dashed white lines, those are all the start of hairline cracks spreading. the pattern almost looks like where the pane went over some rollers, perhaps during manufacture, that didnt present till a later date under pressure.