help! leaking tank

L

longhorn

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Dec 2, 2002
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I got a used 30g glass tank yesterday. However, after I filled the tank with water, I noticed there were two spots on one edge of the tank was leaking. Fotunately the leak was not too bad (actually, when I reduce the amount of water in the tank they stopped) I figured it was still fixable. so I drained the water and looking for advice here.

Can somebody suggest the best glue to seal the leakage. What did the manufacturers use when they glue the glasses together. Is that stuff available at Home Depot? I guess whatever I will use have to be non-toxic to fishes. Please help!!!

Thanks,

FZ
 
here is what i would do, i would just find a non-toxic silicone and just put it on the crack (on the inside) and put it at least an inch around the whole crack... or if you want to be real safe, you can silicone a small peice of glass over the crack, if you do that, put it on the whole peice of glass and on the egdes so the fish cant rub up against it and cut themselves... good luck what ever you do...
 
Make sure the area is totally dry before applying the silicone.
 
look go to your local fish store or even petsmart and get aquarium silicone. I would stay away from home depot since most of the silicone they have was stricly made for home use. so i strongly advise going to a fish or pet store to get it.....
 
Originally posted by BLOOPY"03"
look go to your local fish store or even petsmart and get aquarium silicone. I would stay away from home depot since most of the silicone they have was stricly made for home use. so i strongly advise going to a fish or pet store to get it.....
Click to expand...

You can get 100% pure silicone at your local Home Depot a whole lot cheaper. Do not fall into the "for Aquarium Use only" trap.

Just get the Silicone that has no additives (ie not the one that says Mildew resistant)

I and many others use silicone from the hardware store in our tanks with no problem whatsoever.
 
How long was the tank dry? Sometime silicone that's dried will swell a bit when kept wet and the leak may seal itself.

Barring that, if the leak is at a seam between two pieces of glass, you'll probably have to reseal at least that seam. You can try to patch the existing seam with silicone, but new silicone doesn't stick well to cured silicone.

Jim
 
Thanks folks. I got some acquarium silicone from Home Depot.
They have silicone specifically target for acquarium. The price is a lot cheaper, but is comparable to Pet Club (a chain pet store here in the Bay area).

The leakage of my tank is not too much, just beads of water sipping out at the seam. I am afraid if I followed instructure by first remove the old silicon and reseal it will do more harm to the tank so just patched the new silicone to the cured one. Hopefully the new layer will cover the tiny leakage from the old one.

For those of you guys have done this before, how do you make it look good? After applying the silicone to the surface I used my finger to smooth the edge out but this seems to make the patch looks really ugly.

Also, how do you remove the residual silicon from areas that were acacidentally touched by silicone? I had a hell of time removing the residuals. Thinking some sort of solution might help. any suggestions?
 
If you get it before the silicone cures, mineral spirits will remove the silicone. If you don't get it before then, it's very difficult to remove. (A razor blade can help get it off the glass, but it's hard to get it totally off...)

Jim
 
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