Glass Tank Lids- a couple of facts

[FreshyFresh]

Good info!

I went through the same thing needing glass tops for two 29g tanks we set up for (land) hermit crabs last year. Most stores in my area were out of them at the time. COVID I suppose.

One thing I've found with aqueon glass tops is the glass is much thinner on them now then it was. To be expected I guess. They are expensive unless you catch them on sale. More than the $1/gal tanks they fit on. Petco is where I ultimately found them in stock for an OK price.

 

[jake72]

Good info!

I went through the same thing needing glass tops for two 29g tanks we set up for (land) hermit crabs last year. Most stores in my area were out of them at the time. COVID I suppose.

One thing I've found with aqueon glass tops is the glass is much thinner on them now then it was. To be expected I guess. They are expensive unless you catch them on sale. More than the $1/gal tanks they fit on. Petco is where I ultimately found them in stock for an OK price.

Certainliy the smaller ones are thin but the ones I picked up for my 120 are thick and heavy. These are 24 inches wide; unfortunately the hinges take a lot of stress from the weight. I like the silicon idea but i'm not sure it would last long with such a heavy lid. My 120 (48x24x24) was a marineland and i presume that is the top brand as oppose to the aqueon. The aqueon lid i picked from petco for 10/29 are as you mentioned quite thin. I didn't check if their top for larger tanks are heavier. While i bit the pullet for the 10/29 ($16); $16 for the 5 gallon lid was just too much

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have refused to buy Marineland (used to be Perfecto) tanks from day one. In fact I am now at the point where I stopped buying any product from Marineland for a lot of years.

My first filter was an Emperor 400, it was followed by a second ffilter on the tank- AN AC200. The 400 crapped out in about 8 years, the AC is still running fine some 20 years later. I replaced the 400 and had it on the tank for about 15 minutes when I packed it up and returned it.

There was a trend in the hobby for many years of manufacturers being bough up by conglomerates who created "pet" division. One of the things all of them did was to try and squeeze more profit from the products. This was done by making them lesser quality, Even AquaClears made the plastic parts thinner.

So a lot of the truly quality items many of us used to prefer are now a much lower quality or gone entirely.

And perhaps the worst part of it all is the digitaliation of equipment. Almost aby time something breaks in equipment with a digital component, it is the digital component that is what broke. About the only digital item I use for any of my tanks are my heater controllers. And I would not need these if the heaters were actually reliable, I had to boil the inhabitants of two tanks before I wised up.

The bigger the tank the thicker the glass for bot the tank and its lids. But consider this. If you break a lid, all you have to do is fix or replace it, The tank will not suffer much, if at all, for the few days a lid is absent. However, a tank itself better not crack or break since that cab put all the water and fish on the floor. So the tank glass must be highly reliable while the lids just need to be passably so.

Over the years I have had a couple of leakers but never had a blowout. So the glass being used must be thick enough. I am not a glass expert, so I wonder if technology has been able to improve the strength of glass at all over the past decades.

 

[jake72]

I have refused to buy Marineland (used to be Perfecto) tanks from day one. In fact I am now at the point where I stopped buying any product from Marineland for a lot of years.

My first filter was an Emperor 400, it was followed by a second ffilter on the tank- AN AC200. The 400 crapped out in about 8 years, the AC is still running fine some 20 years later. I replaced the 400 and had it on the tank for about 15 minutes when I packed it up and returned it.

There was a trend in the hobby for many years of manufacturers being bough up by conglomerates who created "pet" division. One of the things all of them did was to try and squeeze more profit from the products. This was done by making them lesser quality, Even AquaClears made the plastic parts thinner.

So a lot of the truly quality items many of us used to prefer are now a much lower quality or gone entirely.

And perhaps the worst part of it all is the digitaliation of equipment. Almost aby time something breaks in equipment with a digital component, it is the digital component that is what broke. About the only digital item I use for any of my tanks are my heater controllers. And I would not need these if the heaters were actually reliable, I had to boil the inhabitants of two tanks before I wised up.

The bigger the tank the thicker the glass for bot the tank and its lids. But consider this. If you break a lid, all you have to do is fix or replace it, The tank will not suffer much, if at all, for the few days a lid is absent. However, a tank itself better not crack or break since that cab put all the water and fish on the floor. So the tank glass must be highly reliable while the lids just need to be passably so.

Over the years I have had a couple of leakers but never had a blowout. So the glass being used must be thick enough. I am not a glass expert, so I wonder if technology has been able to improve the strength of glass at all over the past decades.

I don't disagree with you but aqueon is just as bad - they all suck. Going custom is of course a solution there - but when i purchased the 120 i was moving cross town and needed it 'now'. Most of my tanks larger than 29s will be custom - also the house i'm moving to next year is designed to tolerate catastrophic leaks of tanks up to 800 gallons. I guess what I'm saying is there are no good mass produced vendors out there - so you can either pay $20 for a poorly made 20 long or $200 for a custom made 20 long.

 

[dougall]

There's a step between mass produced and custom.

Look at those marketed to reef or Aquascaping folks.

Quality is significantly better

?

Look at folks like Oase, UNS, Waterbox, Red Sea, innovative Marine, ADA ... even more mainstream companies like Fluval and Cobalt are pretty good too.

Glass can be significantly thinner if tempered.

That being said, the only recent Aqueon aquariums are a pair of 2.5g rimless cubes

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Well- I have a pair of six foot AllGlass tanks I got used about 7 years ago. These are very old tanks, They came with the AllGlass raised logo pasted to the class and it cannot be removed. I would bet these tanks are decades old. the glass on the 150 is 1/2 inch thich and 3/8 on the 125.

I have had 3 leakers. My first tank, a 45, developed a small leaks near the top after about 10-12 years, I had a used 75 in-wall tank that deveolped a leak in the bottom right corner. That tank was with me about 8 or 9 years and with the original owner for about 5. Finally, I di buy a 20L from Glasscages.com that leaked as soon as I filled it. Now those three leakers were out of about 35 tanks maybe a few more i have owned over the years. As time went by I sold some and then bought either bigger ones or down the road actually rebought the same size.

I do not reseal leakers, even the slow leakers. They get thrown out and replaced.

Here is the thing to consider about cars by way of an analogy. Whether you are talking an inexpensive Subaru or a top of the line Mercedes, you can end up with a lemon from either one. The same applies to tanks. From the minute they are made they are never treated in an Identical way. From how they are transported from factory to a store, how they are handled in the store and then we buy them. How you may man-hadle it into your car/truck, how you muscle it into place etc. all matter.

Then there are the everyday issues. When you set it up did you accidentally bang the glass, did you drop something onto the boittom doing the layout? How about using that bladed algae scraper, did you scrape silicon away by accident?

As for tempered glass, it is stronger and safer, But it will cost about 25% more. But the bigger problem is it has to be manufactured to the exact size needed as once it is tempered, it cannot be cut.

I am not sure about now, but in years past AllGlass offered tempered bottoms on certain sizes.

One last observation. If a tank breaks, that is the glass itself cracks or outright shatters, that is one thing. However, if it leaks at the joints, that is a silicone issue. The more expensive tank brands use ther same silicone as the Aqueon or Marineland tanks. Tanks must be sealed with 100% pure silicone. Brand does not matter in this respect. So the likely-hood of a silicone failure is equal in the more expensive and the most commonly used brands.

I do know this about tempered glass. In NY when we replacde two windows with a single very large pane of glass we had to have it made tempered because of the size. This was a regulation in NY, we had no choice. Theglass people explained to us the part about how it is made and that it cannot be cut down once it is tempered.

 

[jake72]

One thing I was told when I was looking at custom aquariums - is that they will only use black silicon because they can't find a clear silicon that will last as long and they offer a life time warranty.
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All my aqueon tanks use clear silicon; but my one marineland tank uses black silicon.
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In terms of leak - i've had 2 failed tanks in 2 years - one was a aqueon 29 that sprung a slow leak in the bottom (silicon issue); the other was a 40B where the bottom split down the middle (maybe the panel wasn't set flat in the frame? Both tanks were setup for around a year before they failed.

One last observation. If a tank breaks, that is the glass itself cracks or outright shatters, that is one thing. However, if it leaks at the joints, that is a silicone issue. The more expensive tank brands use ther same silicone as the Aqueon or Marineland tanks. Tanks must be sealed with 100% pure silicone. Brand does not matter in this respect. So the likely-hood of a silicone failure is equal in the more expensive and the most commonly used brands.

 

[fishorama]

That's interesting about black vs clear silicone, I'd never heard that. I wonder if it's true, I thought it was more of a modern aesthetic fad. I di use it to reseal a tank once & to stick cork to slate. The cork experiment failed after a couple years.

I think it was a DIY rimless tank with thick glass that didn't leak but was not a very tidy job. I'm sure no tape was used, but a lot of silicone was, lol. It was my 1 & only foray into rimless Until I decided I needed a lid for both evaporation & jumping fish...& safer lighting, just a matter of time until I knocked it into the tank (eek!)

Back to lids, I ordered a 4ft 1 piece lid (no top center brace). But it was too small by less than 1/4 inch. Oops, should have measured better, I thought it was "standard". Went to a local glass shop. I brought measurements & we did drawings too to guess how wide & thick to support the top & light. They made 2x 3 or 4 inch wide front to back supports for the glass & even rounded the edges so I wouldn't get hurt (how did they know I am a klutz? I may have mentioned that light falling in tank would not be good). They must have been bored & interested in a different project, the price was very cheap. About what I would have paid for thin, cut it myself glass with sharp edges.

I think it's 55g & up tanks that have tempered glass bottoms. I have seen stickers that say something like "do not drill" along with date of manufacture. Maybe just my 75g & 5ft 120g tanks? It's been a long time since I saw the tanks empty or looked up underneath

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Well Glasscages.com uses either silicone. I used to get their tanks, but they had huge delivery issues and I gave up on them.

I cannot find any evidence that black is superior to clear. I have never seen a tank sealed with white silicone. I have one tank with black silicone and the rest are clear. The biggest difference between the black and clear is how they look in a tank. You can see the back corner seams as black bars which will disappear if you use a black background. If not they are more obvious than clear silicone.

On the other hand algae tends to get under the clear silicone where it extends beyond the actual point of joining the pieces. The black tend to mask it however. I see no algae under the black silicone in my one tank.

As for tank glass cracking or shattering this is normally because of strees imbalances cause by the tank not being level or very close to it. The less any tank is level, the greater the odds the glass will fail or at leas the silicone will leak. When setting up tanks my two most import tools are my long level and my assortment of wood shims. To insure the tank is level it must be one the stand and have water in it. The heavier a tank, the more likely it is to become a bit uneven as its weight increases.

Floors can be a bit uneven or can settle a bit differently based on where the greatest weight is. Unlevel tanks do not distribute the weight evenly which cause uneven pressure somewher in the tank and that works to crack or shatter the glass at worst and to incline the silicone seal to develop a leak or leaks.

Finally, considering the number of tanks which have been made and sold bu Aqueon and Perfecto, I have to believe they want to have the lowest failure rate for their tanks of any size. So if one silicone were clearly better than the other, they would make and argument for using one over the other. My guess is that most hobbyists get the clear, however, folks really into display tanks may prefer the black because of the algae thing and because when using a black background, the black silicone is way less obvious.

 

[jake72]

glasscages has new management - new owner et all - folks who have received their new tanks have been fairly happy. It was customaquarium that told me they only use black - glasscages doesn't offer life time warranty unless you pay nearly 2x the price. I'm just telling you what they told me - not indicating any evidence to support such.

Well Glasscages.com uses either silicone. I used to get their tanks, but they had huge delivery issues and I gave up on them.

I cannot find any evidence that black is superior to clear. I have never seen a tank sealed with white silicone. I have one tank with black silicone and the rest are clear. The biggest difference between the black and clear is how they look in a tank. You can see the back corner seams as black bars which will disappear if you use a black background. If not they are more obvious than clear silicone.

On the other hand algae tends to get under the clear silicone where it extends beyond the actual point of joining the pieces. The black tend to mask it however. I see no algae under the black silicone in my one tank.

As for tank glass cracking or shattering this is normally because of strees imbalances cause by the tank not being level or very close to it. The less any tank is level, the greater the odds the glass will fail or at leas the silicone will leak. When setting up tanks my two most import tools are my long level and my assortment of wood shims. To insure the tank is level it must be one the stand and have water in it. The heavier a tank, the more likely it is to become a bit uneven as its weight increases.

Floors can be a bit uneven or can settle a bit differently based on where the greatest weight is. Unlevel tanks do not distribute the weight evenly which cause uneven pressure somewher in the tank and that works to crack or shatter the glass at worst and to incline the silicone seal to develop a leak or leaks.

Finally, considering the number of tanks which have been made and sold bu Aqueon and Perfecto, I have to believe they want to have the lowest failure rate for their tanks of any size. So if one silicone were clearly better than the other, they would make and argument for using one over the other. My guess is that most hobbyists get the clear, however, folks really into display tanks may prefer the black because of the algae thing and because when using a black background, the black silicone is way less obvious.