sirdarksol

First, a cautionary tale:
FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS!
I put my new glass top on my guppy tank and thought "awesome! Wait a minute, I forgot to put the handle on." I barely put any pressure on the thing when I was putting the handle on it, but the thing still snapped, cracking through in three or four places and sending a rain of glass shards into the tank (did you know that glass looks like fish food to guppies? I'm such an idiot... thankfully, they're all doing okay, and this was about a week ago).
The instructions very specifically tell you to place the top on a flat surface before putting the handle on, and most people would realize the wisdom of such a move.

Okay, on to what now matters to me: I don't want to waste this glass top, and have decided that I can fix it. There's only one little chip actually missing, and the top doesn't need to support anything, nor does it need to be water-tight.
So what I'm thinking is a combination of epoxy and silicone (applied at different times, of course) to hold the broken pieces together.
Has anyone else needed to fix a top before? Any experience to be shared?

dvc_r

I tried to "score", and snap the glass to make it fit on another tank, but the glass was too thick and I had millions of shard glass EVERYWHERE!!! I was finding slivers for days!!! So I tossed it out!

≈ D ≈

kittymom

We had the same problem SEVERAL times (high lighting makes the glass hot, then water splashing it is too cool - bam!). We siliconed a heavy thick piece of plexiglass as a brace between the two pieces we put together. It wouldn't hold without a brace of some kind - just needs to be waterproof because you have to brace it from the bottom of the glass. And the hard part is getting it to stick...

ckarta

Hi
you can do one easy thing, just use some wooden strips may be 1inch broad and 1/2inch thick below the glass top and then stick all the pieces, so that these wooden pieces can act as a frame, shall work fine.

sirdarksol

An awesome idea, except then the piece wouldn't fit in the grove on the top of the aquarium (I have a standard 20g long), and the lights that I have for the aquarium wouldn't fit on top (I have a custom setup that rests on top of the edge of the aquarium).

Well, I discovered that I need to do something different. I was using the plastic pieces that run along the edges as a brace, but because they're flexible, the broken parts bow in when any weight (like a curious cat) is put on (or jumps on) the top.

kittymom

Your brace HAS to be glued TO the glass on the underside of the glass, and it has to be waterproof. We have some stuff called Diamondwood, but it's not something that everyone has in the garage... Remember it may be underwater at times.

Tavel

I would personally recommend throwing it in the recycling bin and getting a new one. Your main thought was not wasting it, so recycle it! glass is infinitely recyclable, and it's actually more energy efficient to recycle glass than to use virgin silicate because it melts at a lower temperature. I always recycle broken tanks ;-D

(i've never broken a tank used as an aquarium, but keeping reptiles and such causes some temperature extremes that the glass can't handle).

A new top is probably $10-$15 and you're going to end up spending that much money on materials to fix the broken one. Plus the repair will never be structurally sound and most importantly, it'll just look bad no matter what you do.

get a new one.

sirdarksol

Buying a new one is going to cost significantly more than $15. Buying them at local stores will cost $30. Getting one from DFS is something like $15, with $10 for shipping. What I used to fix it cost me nearly nothing, because it's stuff I needed for other projects, anyway)
That being said, I still need to do something different (I'm likely going to get either glass or acrylic and cut a piece to replace the half that's broken).

Tavel

that's halfway between replacing and fixing...hehe. see, i never have epoxy or caulk just sitting around because they always seem to go bad between projects.

a glass pane will be cheaper than acrylic, but it may not matter on a piece that small.

sirdarksol

I'll probably go with the glass, but it's a bit of a trip for a me, and usually ends with me buying more than I planned (stained glass is a bit of a hobby for me).

I make models for sci-fi/fantasy wargames, and have found that both the epoxy and the silicone are useful replacements for the stuff that games Workshop sells, and you get three or four times as much for the same price. That's win-win in my book.