sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
... oh boy not another tank!
... although not technically rebuilt (and by technically, I mean its not rebuilt, it's being rebuilt )
Well with my luck with tanks I'll find a way to break this one too and need another!
So as much as I like to ramble I'm really going to try to keep this short. This tank was an inspiration started from when the other guy cracked his 200+ gallon lee mar in his truck Discussion was started someone said they're to the point they want to give it away, I said I'd take it. At the time it was just a "lets see if I can fix it" mindset. Well things changed.
Old 115g soft tank had the overflow carved in the back external like, unfortunately the old one leaked too much, so I replaced it with what I thought would be a brilliant job, and it was... until it started leaking too (that whole acrylic & glass bonding thing needs some work ), well as I tried to remove the overflow, I remembered I welded the acrylic to both sides of the glass... so tried force.. dur... crack.. end of tank (there's a thread somewhere with that info). Ok everything went to the 100g acrylic emergency tank I just broke down not a month earlier... due to me breaking it (seeing a pattern here?) well I need to get into action to fix that Lee Mar tank!
Ok enough back story.. the tank is 32" long x 24" wide x 24" tall, no starphire (I'm pretty sure), one of those ugly internal overflows, and the glass is 1/2" thick.. pretty heavy little tank.. roughly 70-75 internal gallons or so.
Here's the crack, the entire bottom is borked.
Either way I was thinking about ways to fix it... I got really desperate at one time and though I could just slather the whole thing with silicone... luckily the crack extended into the overflow box so that wouldn't have worked... but hey...
Then I got the idea of PVC sheets by seeing a few of the A.G.E. aquariums.. found the adhesive that I need to get the two to bond, now the question was to simply slip it on top of the broken glass, or remove the glass and do it up proper.
Well I decided to remove the old glass because I didn't know how much it'd shift etc...
Unfortunately the glass was inside the side panels, so I would have to remove the silicone that's "in the crack" to get it out... so I came up with the brilliant idea of cutting it out! First with a razor blade (which failed), then I had some brass wire that I could fish through and give it and saw along the seam.
Which worked brilliantly! Until I got a snag and the wire broke. Apparently parts of the glass were compressed a little bit tighter than others... again and again nothing.. fine I'll work on the overflow... broke wire after wire... the thing is to get wire thin enough to fit through it actually is quite easy to break! Well brilliant guy that I am as I had my head in my hands I noticed out of the corner of my eye some fishing line! Dur dah dur!!! Had a fairly high strength 25 pound IIRC, and sawed the overflow right off no problem (ok it took a while but no broken line!)
(no picture)
Unfortunately the bottom was proving to be to much, those tight points simply would not let me saw through. So I got the idea of drilling some holes with a small tile/glass drill bit... I figure if I go sloppy I'd put another crack in it, then can remove it smaller pieces. That didn't work either... a couple times I did hit the bottom with a hammer just to "force it" but damned if the glass never so much as chipped! Well I whacked the drill (with glass bit) against the glass and sure enough instant chip! Hello.... again and again and again I went... at the point I was running on destructive adrenaline... well one such whack popped a hole right through the center and that glass split in multiple directions outward from the hole!
Too bad I don't have pictures of this act, I was so happy that I made a ton of smaller pieces, that I simply worked out each jagged piece one at a time and who cares if silicone was still on it, not for long!
TADA! Glass is gone!
And although this looks like it might be a rimless tank... its not, that's the bottom! You can see where the overflow was, I still need to take a razor and remove all the old junk. I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to use the old overflow, I might, I'm not going to try to cut an external in this, the glass is just too damn thick for me to want to try. I was thinking PVC overflow (not pipes) however the guys at Tap plastics cut my PVC to size, and while might have been a bit more expensive than other plastic shops, I got the exact size I needed and didn't need to buy a whole 4'x8' sheet of it!
And here's the PVC, there's actually two sheets I'm going to sandwich and glue together. The bottom is going to sit flush with the stand (whenever I get the chance to build that) so I'm not terribly worried about the overall strength of the bottom, it's not a floating bottom like you see on many glass tanks. However these two sheets were pretty damn heavy, not quite glass heavy, but closer to glass than acrylic in weight. Need to order the silicone I need and weldon to get everything ready.
So that's all for now... only interesting observation is there is an uber-amount of static cling to those pvc sheets I tried to wipe off some dust from them and half the cat hairs on my sweater flew off my sweater onto the sheet!
I'll see when I can get more time to work on it, this weekend is out (Superbowl), but maybe I'll just bang away at it a bit at a time. I'm going to make this an anemone tank, mostly because all the corals in the other tank would be really packed in here, so keep an eye out for really cheap coral giveaways (but it is weedy corals so you're basically going to pay for rock )
... although not technically rebuilt (and by technically, I mean its not rebuilt, it's being rebuilt )
Well with my luck with tanks I'll find a way to break this one too and need another!
So as much as I like to ramble I'm really going to try to keep this short. This tank was an inspiration started from when the other guy cracked his 200+ gallon lee mar in his truck Discussion was started someone said they're to the point they want to give it away, I said I'd take it. At the time it was just a "lets see if I can fix it" mindset. Well things changed.
Old 115g soft tank had the overflow carved in the back external like, unfortunately the old one leaked too much, so I replaced it with what I thought would be a brilliant job, and it was... until it started leaking too (that whole acrylic & glass bonding thing needs some work ), well as I tried to remove the overflow, I remembered I welded the acrylic to both sides of the glass... so tried force.. dur... crack.. end of tank (there's a thread somewhere with that info). Ok everything went to the 100g acrylic emergency tank I just broke down not a month earlier... due to me breaking it (seeing a pattern here?) well I need to get into action to fix that Lee Mar tank!
Ok enough back story.. the tank is 32" long x 24" wide x 24" tall, no starphire (I'm pretty sure), one of those ugly internal overflows, and the glass is 1/2" thick.. pretty heavy little tank.. roughly 70-75 internal gallons or so.
Here's the crack, the entire bottom is borked.
Either way I was thinking about ways to fix it... I got really desperate at one time and though I could just slather the whole thing with silicone... luckily the crack extended into the overflow box so that wouldn't have worked... but hey...
Then I got the idea of PVC sheets by seeing a few of the A.G.E. aquariums.. found the adhesive that I need to get the two to bond, now the question was to simply slip it on top of the broken glass, or remove the glass and do it up proper.
Well I decided to remove the old glass because I didn't know how much it'd shift etc...
Unfortunately the glass was inside the side panels, so I would have to remove the silicone that's "in the crack" to get it out... so I came up with the brilliant idea of cutting it out! First with a razor blade (which failed), then I had some brass wire that I could fish through and give it and saw along the seam.
Which worked brilliantly! Until I got a snag and the wire broke. Apparently parts of the glass were compressed a little bit tighter than others... again and again nothing.. fine I'll work on the overflow... broke wire after wire... the thing is to get wire thin enough to fit through it actually is quite easy to break! Well brilliant guy that I am as I had my head in my hands I noticed out of the corner of my eye some fishing line! Dur dah dur!!! Had a fairly high strength 25 pound IIRC, and sawed the overflow right off no problem (ok it took a while but no broken line!)
(no picture)
Unfortunately the bottom was proving to be to much, those tight points simply would not let me saw through. So I got the idea of drilling some holes with a small tile/glass drill bit... I figure if I go sloppy I'd put another crack in it, then can remove it smaller pieces. That didn't work either... a couple times I did hit the bottom with a hammer just to "force it" but damned if the glass never so much as chipped! Well I whacked the drill (with glass bit) against the glass and sure enough instant chip! Hello.... again and again and again I went... at the point I was running on destructive adrenaline... well one such whack popped a hole right through the center and that glass split in multiple directions outward from the hole!
Too bad I don't have pictures of this act, I was so happy that I made a ton of smaller pieces, that I simply worked out each jagged piece one at a time and who cares if silicone was still on it, not for long!
TADA! Glass is gone!
And although this looks like it might be a rimless tank... its not, that's the bottom! You can see where the overflow was, I still need to take a razor and remove all the old junk. I haven't made up my mind if I'm going to use the old overflow, I might, I'm not going to try to cut an external in this, the glass is just too damn thick for me to want to try. I was thinking PVC overflow (not pipes) however the guys at Tap plastics cut my PVC to size, and while might have been a bit more expensive than other plastic shops, I got the exact size I needed and didn't need to buy a whole 4'x8' sheet of it!
And here's the PVC, there's actually two sheets I'm going to sandwich and glue together. The bottom is going to sit flush with the stand (whenever I get the chance to build that) so I'm not terribly worried about the overall strength of the bottom, it's not a floating bottom like you see on many glass tanks. However these two sheets were pretty damn heavy, not quite glass heavy, but closer to glass than acrylic in weight. Need to order the silicone I need and weldon to get everything ready.
So that's all for now... only interesting observation is there is an uber-amount of static cling to those pvc sheets I tried to wipe off some dust from them and half the cat hairs on my sweater flew off my sweater onto the sheet!
I'll see when I can get more time to work on it, this weekend is out (Superbowl), but maybe I'll just bang away at it a bit at a time. I'm going to make this an anemone tank, mostly because all the corals in the other tank would be really packed in here, so keep an eye out for really cheap coral giveaways (but it is weedy corals so you're basically going to pay for rock )