Allllllriiiiight! What's your plan for sealing the glass into you frame? You are doing your build very close to the way I plan to do mine and one part I can't figure out in my brain yet is sealing the glass in when the tank is being sealed with the Permadri. Questions I ask self: will one stick to the other? Should the glass be sealed first then the pond coat? or pond coat then glass? other options? Unfortunately self doesn't have the answers. But perhaps you do...or will... badoleross, the guinea pig, semicolon hyphen closing parenthesis.
My 315G Plywood Tank Build
- Thread starter BadOleRoss
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My plan is to silicone the viewing window into the frame first so the silicone will act as a cushion for the glass. Once that is done I am going to run a bead of silicone, on the inside of the tank around the outside edge of the viewing window to fill the gap left between the glass and the frame. From there I am planning on coating the entire inside of the tank with Pond Coat including the first 1.5 inches of the viewing window all the way around embedding some of that drywall mesh tape to help with the bond. Hopefully, this will seal the glass. I am going to pick up a small piece of glass tomorrow and see how the Pond Coat bonds to glass. I will post the results. Pete also has a different idea on sealing the edge on the 4300G build thread.
Adding a little more to my rambling, in the DIY Plywood Tank sticky there is a build where the silicone was used to silicone the glass right to the Pond Coat, it worked but it is my understanding that silicone with eat away at the Pond Coat after time. I have not idea if this is accurate or not.
It shall be interesting. I have been following pete's build as well and I remember what he was saying about his method but I need to see pictures to understand it. So we shall see I suppose. Good luck.
It's just that, a tank that is primarily made out of plywood. If you go to the beginning of this thread you will see that this tank that I am building is plywood and 2x4s with the exception of the viewing window. It's a cost effective way to build a big tank as long as you are reasonably comfortable working with the materials. There is a sticky at the top of the DIY sections that shows you several plywood tank builds.Jbexotics;3883859; said:
I got 3 coats of Pond Coat on the tank and 2 coats on the sump. Very nice stuff to work with. Pond Coat has the consistancy that is somewhere between latex paint and pudding. If you have never worked with it before and are intending to, I recommend putting the first coat on as thick as you can. The first coat goes on very nice and adheres to the wood great, the 2nd coat is easier to thin out making it harder to build up the mils. I have done some testing on glass and acrylic and whether pond coat could be used to seal the viewing window. Pond coat stuck very well to glass and acrylic. If you "buttered" both the glass and the wood with a nice juicy layer of pond coat and stuck them together, I really think it would work. I used the pond coat to attach a piece of angled aluminum to a piece of wood to see if I could use it in my sump as a rail to hold drip plates and alike and I could not easily pull the aluminum off the wood. I really had to force the aluminum to break the pond. Anyway, here are some pics....
I really like working with it. I am going to do a little more testing on some different things so I am sure the glass will seal correctly. I have heard that silicone does not stick to the liquid rubber but I have also read threads where it was used with no issues. Cant afford to be wrong on that one.....
Had to check before I rambled on, Joey, that was your build where you used silicone on the pond coat to seal the viewing window...I know you no long have the tank but as far as you know have there been any issues with the silicone sealing to pond armor?
Had to check before I rambled on, Joey, that was your build where you used silicone on the pond coat to seal the viewing window...I know you no long have the tank but as far as you know have there been any issues with the silicone sealing to pond armor?
