acrylic tank crack

I'll take door #2. You were working with a mass produced beginners tank, and one of the big drivers on such tanks is price. That means you cut costs as much as possible, and the most obvious way to do that is to use the least amount of material possible. If you had the same size tank assembled from 3/16" acrylic sheet, it likely would have been fine. For a while longer anyway! You have just been given a very valuable lesson in structural engineering in regards to the importance of the placement of load bearing members properly! You may not believe this, but if you had a tank which was much larger and completely spanned the top it would be much safer than your set up. The flat top panel is not designed to support any appreciable weight for an extended period.

That's why I don't use acrylic in anything larger than 5-10g :/ sorry for your loss of a tank, man.

rufioman said:

That's why I don't use acrylic in anything larger than 5-10g :/ sorry for your loss of a tank, man.

Click to expand...

really? Acrylic is much stronger than glass. I'd say the larger you go the more you should consider going acrylic.

I think you're mistaking those 5-10gal kits for actual acrylic, those are plastic toys.

The plastic and the crack looks to me, to be polystyrene, instead of acrylic.

All I know is after owning 2 acrylic tanks (100 & 50 gallon) is that both had crazing, cracking, weeping, leaking, and structural sag issues, even on solid and level foundations. Add to this the inability for acrylic to shed heat with any kind of lighting and you have a pain compared to standard glass. While Ill admit that acrylic is miraculously lighter then glass, allows light to pass more easily, and is scratch repairable, IMO those benefits do not outweigh their negatives over glass which once in place regardless of how heavy is seldom moved (once in 10 years). Glass also is also a far better conductor of heat which is important for maintaining accurate and predictable temperature at low cost for multiple tanks using room ambient source. All 9 of my GLASS tanks totaling 1500 gallons maintain and store heat at the exact room temperature of the house between 77-79F at a fraction of the cost of using tank heaters and chillers to chase the green-house affect that acrylic causes being a very poor conductor of heat.

Acrylic has many advantages over glass. Weight in larger capacity tanks being the main one. However I would not by a cookie cutter acrylic aquarium. You need to pay attention to the thickness of the material.