300 Gallon stand and canopy

[Bassinkorea]

It's double paned on the bottom. Do you mean replace the entire bottom pane? Actually that is kind of my only hope. The glass company nearby may be able to do that for me. Depends on if they can easily remove the pane that's there now. And if I can get it over to them.

I'm sure they'd charge me more than I already paid for the damn thing though.

If the crack is in the bottom pane only, then all I would do is buy a pane of glass the same size as the whole inside bottom of your tank, put the new pane in and fully silicone it in. Job done!!

As a guess, I would think it would only need to be a relatively thin piece of glass.

I hope that made sense

 

[Egon]

That sounds like a perfect setup. And way simpler than most too. How do you treat the water dripping in? That's the one part of the automatic setups I never really understood.

That's definitely a goal of mine for when I own my house. For now I'm still renting, so I can't really run a bunch of pipe all over the place.

I just use tap water, no filter of any kind. Simple. I have a large tank though, 360. I don't seem to have issues. The corydoras have bread and I have more corydoras in my sump than my tank now My point is the tank must be healthy if the fish are breading. I honestly believe water treating is over kill. If the tap water is good enough for me it's good enough for my fish, and of course they are happy. If the water quality is good enough for them to bread then I would have to say the fish are happy. A lot of people will disagree and say tap water is bad for this reason or that reason. I just don't see it.

 

[DaveB]

If the crack is in the bottom pane only, then all I would do is buy a pane of glass the same size as the whole inside bottom of your tank, put the new pane in and fully silicone it in. Job done!!

As a guess, I would think it would only need to be a relatively thin piece of glass.

I hope that made sense

Not really, but probably because I know the tank better. In addition tot he bottom pane (cracked) and top pane (fine) there's also a brace/skeleton/frame piece of glass around the edges as well. It's also 1/2" glass and is probably 3" thick. So at the bottom, if you look at the pictures up top of the chipping, there is actually 1.5" of glass at the edges. But if I was to lay something inside it, there'd be a gap because of the frame piece.

To be honest, it seems like total overkill and I can't really think of any reason why it'd matter if the bottom pane is cracked, because I can't think of any reason why the bottom pane is even there at all. The remaining pieces ought to be able to handle the weight and pressure, I would think. But I never took physics and know nothing about glass, so I'm sure there's something I'm missing. Maybe since the pressure ends up at the edges when it's on a stand, even with a plywood and foam top, this would eventually cause the smaller piece formed inside the crack to cave or distort or twist, which would apply pressure to the middle intact bottom pane, which would also eventually crack and leak. I have no idea. I'm sure that extra pane has a purpose if they put it there and were willing to add another hundred pounds to an already oppressively heavy tank. I mean, I've competed in (and won) strongman contests and even I have a hard time even picking it up. The fact that they were able to even get it out of the basement at the house I bought it from amazes me.

 

[Pharaoh]

If you have double pane glass, you could always fill it up in the garage and see if it holds for a week or so.

Honestly, I would look at replacing the pane of glass or trying to patch it before getting rid of the whole tank. But that's just my preference.

 

[chemicall]

Yeah I would patch it from the inside.........That glass frame that is inside there.....just cut glass to fit in around it and match the heights., then silicone. Then a larger sheet of glass to cover it all over.

That's what i'd do, pulling that 2nd pane of glass out could be tough and take a while, you could do the inside in a few hours.

before patching it though inside the tank I'd fill it for a week like Pharaoh said, Then you could be more than 100% sure after you patch it inside that it's gonna be tough.

 

[DaveB]

2 problems I can see:

1) I don't have any room in the garage to put it since the landlord/owner uses two spots so I don't get one.

2) Even if I did, the garage is sloped, just as the sidewalk it's on now is, and there's a pretty good chance the floor itself under the carpet is not level either. So no matter where I put it, it's an issue.

I'm still kind of thinking that as long as there's an intact 1/2" pane in there, which there is, it's strong enough to hold water. But if the ground isn't level and that stresses the broken bottom pane, that could lead to more cracking and possible pressure on the intact piece, which could create a real problem.

What advantage would patching the inside have over other methods, such as just putting a fourth pane of glass on the bottom?

 

[chemicall]

2 problems I can see:

1) I don't have any room in the garage to put it since the landlord/owner uses two spots so I don't get one.

2) Even if I did, the garage is sloped, just as the sidewalk it's on now is, and there's a pretty good chance the floor itself under the carpet is not level either. So no matter where I put it, it's an issue.

I'm still kind of thinking that as long as there's an intact 1/2" pane in there, which there is, it's strong enough to hold water. But if the ground isn't level and that stresses the broken bottom pane, that could lead to more cracking and possible pressure on the intact piece, which could create a real problem.

What advantage would patching the inside have over other methods, such as just putting a fourth pane of glass on the bottom?

I'd say the biggest advantage of patching the inside would be that your 4 sides of the tank(front, back, left, right,) would then all be directly siliconed to that new glass you install inside, making it stronger.

Adding another piece of glass to the bottom would work though....

My guess is the tank maybe got sat on a small rock or something in your yard, With these flat bottomed tanks you have to be very careful of that(mine is flat bottomed also)

I heard a story from my friend about a flat bottomed tank, set it up on the stand, start filling, and poof! all because there was a tiny pebble on the stand and that flat bottom was pushing against it. That must not have been fun......

And yes with the crack your are going to want to get it as level as possible, do you have a stand for it? If so put the stand in the house and get the tank on there. Have a couple people with you to lift the stand up a bit as you shim it level. Since the tank weighs 800lbs you said? thats enough to push down on the carpet and floorboards so you can shim it level properly. If you level it with just the stand in place and no tank on it, after you add the tank + water it may go unlevel, this has happened to me before with big tanks.

 

[Pharaoh]

There would really be no difference from patching the inside vs adding another pane. Its all up to you how you want to fix it.

 

[DaveB]

Well, it cracked because of the splintering of the edge of the glass. The glass company that lent me the suction cup told me to sand it to avoid cracking, but I hadn't gotten to it yet because I couldn't lift it up to get under with sandpaper. I guess something about the wood it sat on was just off and the pressure caused the cracking.

I still don't fully understand why GC puts that extra pane on there; other than allowing for cracking from little pebbles without breaking anything that actually touches water, what purpose does it serve? I can totally see why they insist that only pro-built stands and styrofoam pads underneath them are allowed without voiding the warranty though...

No stand - that was originally the whole point of this thread. I was going to build one.

 

[DaveB]

Even more annoying update:

As I expected, the upstairs neighbor flipped out and smashed the tank.

I can't prove it, but there's no other logical explanation for this. He hit it right on the edge of the top glass, right near where the first of the three center braces is. Really could've done some severe damage with more force, but as it is, it just demolished one piece of glass and appears to have spared the cross piece and the front pane.

I saw this today when I arrived just after speaking with Tom at Glass Cages. Apparently the doubled up bottom pane is an ancient design from many years ago and they don't make them that way any more. But he couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't be OK since that bottom pane is just redundant, as long as the stand is perfectly level and I use the foam.

I got a similar explanation from a physics major friend of mine so I'm satisfied with that, at least satisfied enough to finally move the tank in and then leak test it.

Tom also said that I should be able to patch the broken glass on top with another piece, which should be simple enough. I need to take the trim off to be 100% sure of what the damage is, but assuming it's just that one piece, I can patch above and below it with some glass from the local place and be all set, right?

Pics of the new break: