Little something I've been working on...

[Modest_Man]

I picked up a glass 210 recently for $75. The only issue being that the bottom was cracked from one side to the other. I figured I'd give a shot at patching that bad boy up.

New piece of 72" X 24" 1/2" tempered glass in the back of the 'scort. ($202)

Here's the tank upside down with the black trim off and the bottom removed. You can see a bit of the old broken glass to the right.

With the new bottom on. I still had to replace the trim and re-silicone the inside of the tank.

The stand frame with some lighting I removed from an 8' Lowes shoplight ($35 for the stand, $39 for the light plus $24 for the T8 daylight bulbs)

As of tonight the tank is holding it's test water on the stand. Canopy is almost complete ($160 for plywood, wood, trim, and paint) for canopy and finishing stand. I still need to rig the lighting and paint the stand and canopy.

Thought some might find this interesting. It was really quite easy to replace the broken bottom. I'll be at roughly $500 for the finished thing. All rockwork and driftwood will be locally collected.

 

[cichlaguapote]

Wow.. cool..

More info though!!

You just removed the old silicone/glass with a razor blade?
New glass just came from a glass shop?
And you put the glass on, replaced the trim, then siliconed from the inside?

Looks awesome. Thanks for sharing insight on a way to do this.

 

[Modest_Man]

Ok, so I removed the black trim first using a screwdriver to gently pry the trim off the glass.

I removed the silicone on the inside of the tank with a razor blade.

I could not for the life of me get the bottom glass to separate from the sides as one piece, so I took a hammer to the bottom glass and pried off the smaller pieces. I have new respect for the bonding strength of silicone to glass.

To make sure I had all the old silicone off I use a fine wire wheel to remove most everything and then went over it with acetone. You don't want to touch the glass where the silicone is going to bond because the oils in your skin can cause a weaker bond.

I custom ordered the glass from a glass shop (annealed glass would have been a lot cheaper, but I went with tempered to be safe.) The glass I removed was 5/8" annealed and I replaced it with 1/2" tempered.

To install, I ran a bead of silicone on the bottom edge of the 4 side panels (would be on the top in the photos) then set the bottom piece on and let it cure. I added a few hundred pounds of weights to make sure it adhered properly. I ran a slight bead of silicone around the trim and then placed it back on the tank. After these were cured I re-siliconed the inside of the tank and let cure for two days.

It was terribly easy, except for removing the old glass.

I guess I should have probably posted this in the DIY section...

 

[ewok]

cool stuff
wouldn't it have been near the same cost to get a 210 gallon that wasn't cracked?

 

[Modest_Man]

New a 210 tank alone would run me around $700. For this one it was $75 + the $200 for the new glass bottom. $275 and some elbow grease > a $700 tank.

 

[Opiate]

lookin good mate!!

 

[Modest_Man]

Here's an update.

Finished the canopy, haven't finished the stand fully yet. I don't know what I'm going to do about doors on the front, as you can see.

This shows my DIY lighting that I took out of an 8 foot Lowes shop light (39.99) holding 4 12,000k T8 lights. The canopy opens and locks like this, and I didn't even measure the ceiling clearance.

I have a lot of driftwood that I need to clean up and mount to slate to get it to sink. The front will be covered by plywood with trim and painted black, like the sides and canopy already are.

 

[Doremon72]

Nice lighting setup. Good use of advanced "shoplight" techcnology. =) I would never have the sack to try replacing glass though. You made it look easy.

 

[xander]

you are one lucky sob for the canopy to fit like that

 

[gotpiranha?]

you are one lucky sob for the canopy to fit like that

yeah no kidding huh.Look like it was perfect.