Hello, is 25 mm of tempered glass good enough for a 1909 gallon tank?

[Flaring Afro]

It is not clear to me whether you are using glass thickness calculators of which there are several reliable ones AFAIKnew. Part of the calc is the safety factor, to which the prior posters alluded to.

The only thing that matters is the water pressure on a piece of glass and the weakest link is the length x height pieces. The longer the unsupported length (no posts for instance) and the deeper the tank, the thicker the glass must be. The width of the tank is irrelevant. The pressure on the bottom is also irrelevant to the thickness of the vertical walls.

IDK if it is a good idea to have braces of tempered glass. Maybe commercial manufacturers do that, IDK. I imagine if you chip an edge, the brace would then instantly disintegrate, which may cause a cascading break on the vertical walls.

To be fair the tempered glass walls are the same way. Tempered is great until a large impact and then it's all gone.

I'd trust myself around a tempered euro brace. The only time I'd really be worried is adding large rocks and making sure not to touch the edge with that.

 

[Jexnell]

wednesday13 if I remember right he deals with a lot of DIY tank's

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

To be fair the tempered glass walls are the same way. Tempered is great until a large impact and then it's all gone.

I'd trust myself around a tempered euro brace. The only time I'd really be worried is adding large rocks and making sure not to touch the edge with that.

The edge is the weakest link. The main walls edges are inaccessible and cannot be bumped or accidentally chipped. The edges of the braces and lid holders, and the edges of eurobraces are exposed and it seems to me making them out of tempered glass would be asking for trouble.

 

[Backfromthedead]

Any impact strong enough to shatter a piece of tempered glass will shatter a similar piece of annealed glass all the same so i dont see the point of insisting on annealed here. In fact, much lesser impacts will crack or shatter annealed glass, so i would use tempered because its much less likely to break in the first place.

 

[Flaring Afro]

The edge is the weakest link. The main walls edges are inaccessible and cannot be bumped or accidentally chipped. The edges of the braces and lid holders, and the edges of eurobraces are exposed and it seems to me making them out of tempered glass would be asking for trouble.

People have rimless glass tanks though. If there are drunk buddies over that might somehow slam a bottle into the tank then I can see that being a problem, but aside from that or carelessly loading dry rock I just don't see what realistic impact there could be that would cause it to shatter for most people.

 

[Midwater]

As for comparison, my 12' X 3' X 3' tank is made entirely of 15mm (5/8") tempered glass. Not just the five panels, but bottom bracing, corner bracing, euro and top bracing and also the housing for the underflow/overflows.