Crack in glass, thoughts on the fix?

Hate to beat a dead horse here, and at the risk of getting chewed out by Bogie the glass cop (;D), the bottom is NOT tempered. Gazog hit it right on the head. Tempered glass shatters at the mere sight of a drill bit. As soon as the bit touched the glass, it would be a 5G bucket filled with diamond-sized shards of shatter.

Tangster, if you look hard at the pics, that pane is toast. There are large cracks that move laterally from the hole, making drilling it out to a larger diameter hole, not possible.

As Gazog said, though, you could just replace the bottom piece of glass, but the expense would be darn near the price of a new tank. If it was that important to ya, have it fixed.

One door closes, another opens!

 

loki13:
i have two tanks sitting in the garage with dust on them, depending on where you live ill sell you one real cheap. if your gonna replace the bottom you could use an acrylic black bottom, there should be a company around you that can do that. if thats your choice then have overflows put in also with oversized holes.

 

A sheet of non tempered 1/2 plate from Glass cages is 9.00 a SQ FT or 108.00... Delivery for that would have to be by their truck and to Chicago would be 50 bucks (I actually called her to check) for a total of 158 bucks surprisingly cheap as far as I am concerned.....

 

OK, so then there's removing the broken bottom plate of glass, installing the new one, drilling holes for the overflows.... still would be cheaper than a whole new reef ready tank, but how is the rest of glass? Are there lots of scratches on the front and side panels? Is the overall condition of the rest of the tank worth fixing it? How much could you find a used 125 gal for in good condition? It's up to you in the end.

 

So I'll address the elephant in the room. How much did you pay for this VERY controversial
tank? :-/ Was it soo much that you can't just toss it and start over? This just seems to be going on and on.

 

180 gallon and even used they are not cheap by any means.

Didn't mean to cause such a ruckus! All I'm saying is he seem to want to fix it and it can be done.
If it was me I would most likely fix it to just for the challenge and to be able to say I did it.
I have repaired many tanks, the biggest was a custom about 300 gallon. Its really not that hard
and never had one leak (that I know of at least)

 

More than I should have.

Florida, right around the corner huh

The rest of the glass is in pretty good condition. Enough so that I want to try to salvage the tank. I am a bit of a tinkerer so I am going to use the ideas a few have given me and go from there. Besides it will be a while before I have the funds saved up for all the new gear I will need, so it will give me plenty of time to test it and make sure it will work.

Thanks all.