Cali Kid Corals

Tank repair?

Srt4eric said:
Would a heat gun help me remove the rim on this tank?
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I have removed panels on 40 breeders twice before, but only to reuse the glass for baffles not to fix it. I personally think it’s a huge PITA to take the trim off and separate the panels cleanly. For a novice, it takes quite the effort. I have both times broke the trim to tear it off. Heat gun may help, but a thin, flexible plastic putty knife is pretty helpful getting something under the trim to loosen it. Getting that first separation of silicon to loosen the trim is usually the hardest, then after that it usually peels away fairly easy.

if you’d like a practice tank, I have a 40 breeder with a cracked panel that is garbage and not usable as a tank filled with water. Let me know if you want it.
 
Yeah I'm not sure a heat gun would work, you may end up burning the plastic trim, as Randy said a long putty knife is probably your best bet you just need to physically cut through the silicone holding it together it's no longer goopy it's basically like glue that solidified holding the trim to the glass, just a bit more spongey than crusty glue.
 
Here's the tank. It's a Visio 100 gallon. It's got a pretty thick rim.

Screenshot_20201203-085432_Chrome.jpg
 
Well no one said disassembling a tank would be easy. They're siliconed together to hold against massive water weight pushing against the panels

How big is this chip? Is it just a little bit? Is a crack that goes into the glass? Not sure it'd be worth the trouble of repairing it.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well no one said disassembling a tank would be easy. They're siliconed together to hold against massive water weight pushing against the panels

How big is this chip? Is it just a little bit? Is a crack that goes into the glass? Not sure it'd be worth the trouble of repairing it.
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Little chip. About 1/2 inch.


20201130_174916.jpg
 

Did i just crush my dream?

I need to know if I just killed my dream?!?!? I was stupidly moving the tank in my garage to clean it a bit (alone) and I hear this crack. It's on the upper right hand side of the tank about 2" from the top brace.
www.bareefers.org
 
I literally just finished buying everything I needed to start setting up this tank when I chipped it. I'd buy a new tank if I didnt just spend all of this money on everything else. So effing bummed about this. It doesnt go all the way through the silicon on the edge.
 
sfsuphysics said:
yup 1.5mm or 1/16th inch. However the problem with tiny gaps if you are injecting molding you really need a pneumatic caulking gun as you want to make sure you squeeze all the air out and fill every potential void. If I was rebuilding the whole thing and the panels were easy enough to maneuver I would lay down a bead of silicone along the entire seam and put the glass together and just do that with all the joints, then come back with an inner layer along the inside corners for the water tightness part, while silicone doesn't stick to old silicone, it'll stick to new silicone very well even stuff that has skinned over.

That said... go buy a cheapy 10 gallon tank from Petco when they have their $1/gallon sale, completely disassemble it, clean it, and reassemble it for practice :)
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If I understand your technique:
You tape everything like crazy around the seams.
You set up the right gap.
Then you squirt silicon in from one side, fill void, until it comes out the other side.
When done, you smooth it out, then pull of tape before it dries.

Questions:
How do you set up the gap? Spacers? If so, do they stay in?
Why do you need an expensive caulking gun. It seems like speed does not matter with that technique.
 
Here is how I did it. Glass in light blue. Tape in dark blue, silicone tip in gray. I did it with a cheap hand powered caulk gun, although it was a bit slow going and it was some effort to keep the caulk going in the gap.

Wipe up excess on the outside after, then fillet the inside and peel the tape. Wait a week, and water test outside.

I used toothpicks to set my spacing, clamped, made sure I could still get the toothpicks out, then had a helper remove them as I went along caulking.

I've also seen little silicone blobs or such that remain, although I've only seen that on thicker glass.

When I did my first tank (applied silicone and moved the glass by hand) I simply pressed down until the gap looked right by eye. A more scientific process might be good.

Silicone injection into glass.png
 
rygh said:
If I understand your technique:
You tape everything like crazy around the seams.
You set up the right gap.
Then you squirt silicon in from one side, fill void, until it comes out the other side.
When done, you smooth it out, then pull of tape before it dries.

Questions:
How do you set up the gap? Spacers? If so, do they stay in?
Why do you need an expensive caulking gun. It seems like speed does not matter with that technique.
Click to expand...
The tape is if you want to do one application of silicone, and as mentioned above is really there to make it look nice afterwards, tape is not necessary if you're doing a 2 pass silicone job.
I probably would actually tape the other side too to prevent silicone from squirting out because if it doesn't squirt out it means it stays inside and you're filling more gap.

Gap with spacers, tiny pieces of acrylic super glued to the glass work fine, I've heard some putting down a dollop of silicone and letting it stiffen up, but I dunno depending on the weight of the glass I could see them compressing slightly. The silicone between the glass panes is primarily there as structure, it's not there as a water tightness method, the inside "fillet weld" is your water barrier also being as salt water does eat away at silicone it protects the structure.

Well depends what you call "expensive", but the hard part may be squirting into a 16th inch gap. If you can do that with the el cheapo squeeze squeeze squirt caulking gun then more power to you, but I'm a big fan of pneumatic caulking guns... do have to be careful with them though otherwise you're squirt half the tube out if you're not paying attention :D

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