cleaning acrylic tank question

[joshc21]

so my 440 gallon has a few odd cracks in it, i want to polish them out using novus 3,2,1 but i don’t want to empty my tank completely, move the tank outside and polish it. does anyone know if i just lower the water level below the scratches and clean them off if that is going to effect my water?? in other words… does anyone know if novus 3,2,1 is safe for inside of aquariums with water in it. any responses are appreciated!

 

[tlindsey]

so my 440 gallon has a few odd cracks in it, i want to polish them out using novus 3,2,1 but i don’t want to empty my tank completely, move the tank outside and polish it. does anyone know if i just lower the water level below the scratches and clean them off if that is going to effect my water?? in other words… does anyone know if novus 3,2,1 is safe for inside of aquariums with water in it. any responses are appreciated!

wednesday13

 

[ADawson23]

It is not. The best way to achieve what your wanting you do is to modify a magnetic scrubber. Take your scrubber (flipper, mag tech any brand) and add a piece of hook and loop Velcro (the hard portion) then take a piece of old filter pad and silicon a piece of sand paper to it. You will want to make 2 to 3 of these each. Depending on how bad the scratches are you will want to start with 800 grit sand paper and work your way up to 2000 grit or higher. You can sand with the tank completely full and running.

Writing this on the fly at work so I may have stumbled on my words. If anything doesn’t make sense let me know.

 

[joshc21]

It is not. The best way to achieve what your wanting you do is to modify a magnetic scrubber. Take your scrubber (flipper, mag tech any brand) and add a piece of hook and loop Velcro (the hard portion) then take a piece of old filter pad and silicon a piece of sand paper to it. You will want to make 2 to 3 of these each. Depending on how bad the scratches are you will want to start with 800 grit sand paper and work your way up to 2000 grit or higher. You can sand with the tank completely full and running.

Writing this on the fly at work so I may have stumbled on my words. If anything doesn’t make sense let me know.

awesome, thank you for the reply. so just confirming… novus is aquarium safe?

 

[ADawson23]

In water it is not. If you use it, you will want to wipe the tank down after you have finished your polishing steps, to neutralize the chemicals in the compound. I used 1 part vinegar to water to wipe everything down when I was done.

 

[ADawson23]

Not sure I really answered the question. Yes it is “fish/aquarium” safe once it’s been completely rinsed off. After I polished my tank, I wiped everything down with a water and vinegar mix. I then filled the tank and let it run for about 8 hours. I then drained it completely and refilled added the correct amount of water conditioner. I let the tank run for 48 hours then did a 90% water change. This was probably overkill but I didn’t wanna chance any contamination.

The sanding method will be the safest option with fish and the tank running.

 

[fishguy1978]

You can get a polishing kit from Amazon that includes multiple grades of sandpaper, 800-12,000 (iirc). I used this to polish my 100g before setting it up. Way faster than using Novus too. Make sure you label the pads because once they get wet the numbers disappear.