If you read my thread in the emergency section, you know whats going on here. Basically, my crossbrace was broken in such a way that it was beyond repair. I opted instead to head to the LFS (the fish room, raleigh) and see if I could order the top trim piece for a 55g tank. It ended up costing me a little more than 20$ and I waited maybe a week for it to come. I couldn't get the walnut color to match my tank, so I went with black instead and I think it looks fine. The bottom matches the stand and the top matches the hood & lights 
My plan is to eventually build a canopy for it anyways, so its whatever.
The process might have taken me 3 hours tops, I didn't keep good track of time, and I had a few mini-crises to take care of in the middle of it.
The reason for the whole ordeal:
Before I started:
New trim/curious cat:
Fish in a bucket, hated to leave them in there the whole time, but I didn't have much of an option:
This is how I got the old trim off...just shove the knife up the side & pry...move to a new location & repeat. All the way around. The short sides had a LOT more silicone & were significantly harder to deal with.
Aftermath:
What I was left with after getting the trim off:
After a solid bit of work with razor blades:
Put the tank in the tub & used the shower head handle to rinse all the crap out from scraping the silicone:
I opted to apply the silicone to the new trim instead of to the glass...made sense to me. I didn't worry about getting an even bead all the way around. I probably would have if I had a gun, but I was working with a 3oz tube, its a pain to do long jobs with those...
Finished product!
Funniest incident: While siphoning water into buckets (didn't have a hose long enough to get a siphon going straight to a drain
) I wound up siphoning my newest (very small) senegal bichir into a bucket. I was kneeling at the buckets dealing with my pictus catfish which had gotten stuck in my net while I was picking up my other bichir and I noticed a dark blotch run through the siphon hose....sure enough, there in the bucket is my other bichir:blob:
Annoying things: While I was dealing with that pictus cat stuck in the net, I managed to let all 3 buckets overflow before deciding to just stop the siphon:surrender: I also got cut by one of the pictus while trying to catch by hand (worked every time in the past
) and bit by a bichir doing the same.
As far as the actual process of replacing the trim....its VERY easy, only a little bit time consuming. The worst part (like anything silicone+aquarium, it seems) is cleaning the old silicone off. Although it was significantly easier than when I tried to reseal this same tank.
I suppose thats enough to say about it and probably a few too many pictures. Overall, if you're thinking of this as a last ditch effort before scrapping a tank or passing up a great deal, its a really easy process and relatively cheap as well.
My plan is to eventually build a canopy for it anyways, so its whatever.The process might have taken me 3 hours tops, I didn't keep good track of time, and I had a few mini-crises to take care of in the middle of it.
The reason for the whole ordeal:
Before I started:
New trim/curious cat:
Fish in a bucket, hated to leave them in there the whole time, but I didn't have much of an option:
This is how I got the old trim off...just shove the knife up the side & pry...move to a new location & repeat. All the way around. The short sides had a LOT more silicone & were significantly harder to deal with.
Aftermath:
What I was left with after getting the trim off:
After a solid bit of work with razor blades:
Put the tank in the tub & used the shower head handle to rinse all the crap out from scraping the silicone:
I opted to apply the silicone to the new trim instead of to the glass...made sense to me. I didn't worry about getting an even bead all the way around. I probably would have if I had a gun, but I was working with a 3oz tube, its a pain to do long jobs with those...
Finished product!
Funniest incident: While siphoning water into buckets (didn't have a hose long enough to get a siphon going straight to a drain
) I wound up siphoning my newest (very small) senegal bichir into a bucket. I was kneeling at the buckets dealing with my pictus catfish which had gotten stuck in my net while I was picking up my other bichir and I noticed a dark blotch run through the siphon hose....sure enough, there in the bucket is my other bichir:blob:Annoying things: While I was dealing with that pictus cat stuck in the net, I managed to let all 3 buckets overflow before deciding to just stop the siphon:surrender: I also got cut by one of the pictus while trying to catch by hand (worked every time in the past
) and bit by a bichir doing the same.As far as the actual process of replacing the trim....its VERY easy, only a little bit time consuming. The worst part (like anything silicone+aquarium, it seems) is cleaning the old silicone off. Although it was significantly easier than when I tried to reseal this same tank.
I suppose thats enough to say about it and probably a few too many pictures. Overall, if you're thinking of this as a last ditch effort before scrapping a tank or passing up a great deal, its a really easy process and relatively cheap as well.
