How to Protect Glass At Bottom of Tank?

[couvier]

Hello, I have been through several large glass aquariums with the same size of 72x24x25 inches (180 gal). Im on my 3rd one now over 12 years. The other 2 cracked on the bottom and water spilled all over my house. Anyways I am taking extra measures to make sure this does not happen again. I have made my stand flat and sturdy and started using a foam pad between the tank and stand.

My question is, how can I protect the bottom of the glass inside the tank? Basically protecting it from when I do the gravel siphoning. I assume when gravel siphoning over the years it will weaken the bottom glass of the aquarium when gravel and the siphon tube scrapes against the glass.

I assume using undergravel filters would help in this area or possibly some other kind of product I can lay down at the bottom of the inside of the tank, but what to use for that? Also I could not find an undergravel filter product that fills the 72''x24'' tank I have. Any suggestions on products to use here?

I do use an Ehiem canister filter as well. I was thinking about just laying down the undergravel plates but not actually connecting power heads to it and just leave it up to my canister to do all the filtration. The undergravel plates would just be used to protect the glass from cracking at the bottom. But I was thinking there has to be an easier way to protect the bottom of the tank with some kind of product or material, but what?

 

[dougall]

Eggcrate works well.

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[the loach]

You can't weaken the glass from just siphoning and moving some gravel with that, unless you are using a hammer?
How many inches of gravel is in there? Are there any large rocks? If they all crack at the bottom there is a problem with the stand.

 

[FreshyFresh]

Don't most if not all larger tanks have tempered glass bottoms? The bottom would blow out in one catastrophic rectangle.

 

[dougall]

Don't most if not all larger tanks have tempered glass bottoms? The bottom would blow out in one catastrophic rectangle.

Normally just the bottom.

Rereading the original post, it's not clear if it's the bottom pane of glass, or the bottom of the side panels of glass.

 

[couvier]

The tanks I have used are made from glasscages .com, they said they use regular non tempered glass on the bottom. My stand has gotten a LOT better since I lost two aquariums, it is now perfectly flat and sturdy made from steel and granite on top of that. Thanks for the egg crate idea, I will look into it!

 

[fishorama]

My club recently set up my 5ft X18 inch tank & they used Styrofoam under a large stump weighted down with rocks. This was to keep any pressure points evened out I believe, especially as I live in earthquake country. I had only heard of using egg crate grid before, mostly for tanks with lots of rock structures.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Some folks swear by glasscages,com while othesr swear at them. I have a few tanks from them- 20Ls, 33Ls and 45L (12x48 footprints), I stopped buying from them when they began having delivery truck issues and could not get tanks to where I could meet them. Delivery bacame totally unreliable. However, I still have all the tanks I did get from them and none has ever failed in any way. It has been at least 5 years since I last did business with them.

Many of my tanks are bare bottom with some heavy rocks and wood and are for breeding plecos. In addition, only the frames are supported by the stand. I make a lot of my stands from lumber and to level the frame I apply a strip of this stuff. https://www.homedepot.com/s/foam%20weather%20seal?NCNI-5 I choose the width and thickness according to the tank size. Basically, the foam will compress towards level so the tank pretty much self-levels as long as there are not large gaps or dings in the surface of the wood which is 2x4 stud on end.

 

[couvier]

I was at home depot today and what caught my attention was the Acrylic Lighting Panels made by Plaskolite. These are the thin sheets of plastic that goes with Florescent/LED tube light fixtures. I figure putting them down at the bottom of the tank between the glass and gravel seems like it would do the trick. But I have found zero info about people using them for aquariums, so no idea if this is a good idea. Are they waterproof and safe for fish? Has anyone tried this before? It seems like a great idea to me.

 

[dougall]

Gas pockets and animals getting caught underneath would be 2 pitfalls I could see.