Jestersix

So .... broken glass....

Bruce Spiegelman

Bruce Spiegelman

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I just purchased an aquarium breakdown. The tank is a 30 X 30 X 30 half-inch starfire glass. It was custom built through Neptune's. That's the good news. The bad news is the folks I had helping to move it managed to drop it as they were putting it down. Front panel sustained a crack. Can just a single panel be replaced safely?
 
That sucks. Sorry to hear.

The best way is to rebuild the tank with the new glass.

Silicone doesn't bond with silicone so the corner joints will be suspect unless it is done in 1 shot.


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Vhuang168 said:
That sucks. Sorry to hear.

The best way is to rebuild the tank with the new glass.

Silicone doesn't bond with silicone so the corner joints will be suspect unless it is done in 1 shot.


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Click to expand...

Ah -- stuff happens. No biggie. What do you mean one shot? Can't the current silicon be removed from the edges and then a replacement piece be secured?
 
Once the silicone cures, you won't be able to bond more silicone to it. Meaning even if you cut and replace, the silicone joint won't be continuous. There will be a gap between the silicone seals.


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The problem is there are 2 places where silicone is used, between the panes which is what actually gives the bulk of the tank's strength, and then there's inside the corners which tends to help a bit with leaks, but really is not necessary for stability of the tank.

If you were to take off the front pane, and clean all the edges of the tank there's going to be contact points where the silicone from the front pane touches the silcone from the side panes where they connect on the bottom pane. You can't get a bond where the old silicone touches the new, so there's always a chance of a hair line gap between the new and old silicone..

Now is it possible to salvage this? Sure. The sure fire way is to remove all the panes, and resilicone the whole thing, this is a level of skill of doing this is somewhat high though. An alternative would be to just resilicone the front pane, and scrape off all the interior corners silicone and then redo all of that, yes you may have that hairline amount that doesn't have a bond between the front pane and the side panes where they meet up at the bottom pane, but the inside corner silicone job should keep water from getting to the actual strength joint. But you have to remove ALL the inside corner silicone, because again you will not get any bonding where old touches new. Just remember that the more time you put in prepping the job, the easier, nicer, and more effective the job will be.
 
I had a quote a while back for a single piece of glass in the neighborhood of your cube size plus the labor to take it apart plus the labor to clean the glass plus the labor to put it back together... A new tank of similar dimensions made more sense; it was just too many pluses.
Keith Grandt out of Sacramento would be the local tank builder to contact but then again, I think Vincent is pointing you to the right person here, good luck
 
The more and more I think about this and look at it I realize this tank may be too large for the spot I am going to put it in anyway. Any thoughts on what the value of it is and if it's sellable? The tank is 3 sides of 1/2" starphire. The back is black acrylic with a ghost overflow. It comes with a custom built stand with removable front and side panels (could use a little touch-up paint.) All plumbing is intact as well. The entire set-up was custom built from Neptune's.
 
Value of a broken tank is really hard to judge, since by default it is a non-functional piece of equipment. I mean I've seen a particular manufacturer trying to sell a 10' long aquarium that needs to be resiliconed for roughly 1/3 the price of new, but that's with the glass in tact... AND it's been sitting collecting dust for a while. You really need to find someone who's willing to step in to do that project. I've done something similar myself, but that was only when the tank was free ... and this was pre-baby... hell it was pre-wife and I seemed to have time all day long :D

That said I would be curious as to how the acrylic back is actually bonded to the side/bottom of the tank so it doesn't blow off.
 
sfsuphysics said:
That said I would be curious as to how the acrylic back is actually bonded to the side/bottom of the tank so it doesn't blow off.
Click to expand...

Not sure, but I've seen dozens with the same configuration including every Innovative Marine tank. I know when I got a quote on a tank that was the option as well -- black acrylic back with external ghost overflows.

In any case, I think I'm going to try and fix this one aferall.
 
I've seen acrylic tops and bottoms, but those don't have pressure trying to blow them out, I've seen acrylic inserts for all-in-ones but the amount of pressure there is tiny and there usually is a glass back behind all that, but never an actual vertical pane. Oh well :)

Good job on trying to fix it, could be a neat little project.
 
Two thoughts:

Ask the original manufacturer for help. Ideally:
You take it all apart, clean it, and ship the glass to them.
They add a new piece, silicon the entire thing back together, and ship it back.
Yes, it will probably cost at least 1/2 as much as a new tank. But it will be done right.

Do it yourself, and add a small block of glass in the corners. Say 1/2 x 1/2 x 1
The glass covers the old/new silicon bond, keeping it from leaking, and adding strength.
 
Yeah, that's what steered me clear of the 36" cube...
Now the interesting question... you still looking to somehow replace/fix and set the cube?
 
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