Hi! the name is Felix from montreal, i recently was given a 65g with 25g sump salty that had gotten neglected due to lack of time by my friend (2 jobs + 2 kids you get the drill) so all this arrived here on the 6th of march and was meticulously clean but not over done as i was reinstalling and allready populated tank (one anemone, 1 three stripe damsel, 1 7'' diadema, 1 scarlet hermit, and a few frag) my friend decided to offer it to me as he knew i had good experience with rift lake cichlids and he wanted to give it, not sale it, no time for that.... so i gladly accepted and got it here, was kind of anxious at first from all the complication people talk about with salty, so far, its been over a month and i dont see the fuss, probably due to the fact that i allready have experience with aquarium, who knows....
lets move along, so after this month of going thrue forum and book and blogs, i came to a similar conclusion that i had came with for cichlids and all freshwater fish for this matter, there is a minimum size tank to needed in order to maintain a certain stability in salty and it seems to hover around 120-150g or more, so i decided to check the used stuff around my place and soon got a deal in a garage sale for a 120-25g 5feet long lobster pen made out of 1/2 glass for 35$..... wow thats cheap!.... yeah well here is the cheap part, the person had it for a future project which never came to conclusion, so here is the ''Oh!'' side, the thing was left for a couple of year sitting verticaly on its end, and got pushed around in the garage, thus chipping the glass inside the seam, none of the chip are more then 1/32 to 1/16 thick one is slightly over 1/4 into the seam, by about 1/4 wide two othe are 1/4x1/4 the rest are all 1/8x1/8 or 1/8x1/16 (+/- 10 of them), now i know alot of people here will simply go throw it away... i wont, so i assume all responssibility that may come from using a damaged tank..... so here is my question i have seen a feew place were people were either recommending to put a 1/2 glass dowel along the corner and silicone it there (by the way i already toke off the interior silicone and was planing on redoing it)or silicone a strip of glass to the side panel and by its edge from top to bottom to the front panel, unfortunatly for me 1/2 glass is quite expensive compared to let's say 1/4 as i allready have a bunch of 1/4 pane here and not really on the bright side of financial investment at the moment.... now where was i?... ok so what i had in mind was this one 1/4 strip inside as described with another strip on the exterior of the side panel that would also be siliconned to the edge of the front panel actualy adding 3/4'' of seam to the corner....i would then add two strip 4in wide by the lenght of the aquarium by 1/2 to the top bracing the front pannel (a la eurobracing) with two center brace at the 1/3 and 2/3 mark, these strip would be siliconned to the top of 1/2 panel and 1/4 strip.... basicaly giving this look... i would like your opinion, would you do it like this or should i do it differently......please no uselees comment like ''i know someone who is going to wake to a flood'' i know there is a risk and as i said i will take that risk but i will still make my best to prevent it
NB: the tank had plastic triming on top, but you can definitly see that its a 6 feet tank trim that was cut down to fit 5 feet hence the reason i want to brace it , the trim is pretty useless as it is... ohhh tank is exactly 64x19 1/2x23 3/8
lets move along, so after this month of going thrue forum and book and blogs, i came to a similar conclusion that i had came with for cichlids and all freshwater fish for this matter, there is a minimum size tank to needed in order to maintain a certain stability in salty and it seems to hover around 120-150g or more, so i decided to check the used stuff around my place and soon got a deal in a garage sale for a 120-25g 5feet long lobster pen made out of 1/2 glass for 35$..... wow thats cheap!.... yeah well here is the cheap part, the person had it for a future project which never came to conclusion, so here is the ''Oh!'' side, the thing was left for a couple of year sitting verticaly on its end, and got pushed around in the garage, thus chipping the glass inside the seam, none of the chip are more then 1/32 to 1/16 thick one is slightly over 1/4 into the seam, by about 1/4 wide two othe are 1/4x1/4 the rest are all 1/8x1/8 or 1/8x1/16 (+/- 10 of them), now i know alot of people here will simply go throw it away... i wont, so i assume all responssibility that may come from using a damaged tank..... so here is my question i have seen a feew place were people were either recommending to put a 1/2 glass dowel along the corner and silicone it there (by the way i already toke off the interior silicone and was planing on redoing it)or silicone a strip of glass to the side panel and by its edge from top to bottom to the front panel, unfortunatly for me 1/2 glass is quite expensive compared to let's say 1/4 as i allready have a bunch of 1/4 pane here and not really on the bright side of financial investment at the moment.... now where was i?... ok so what i had in mind was this one 1/4 strip inside as described with another strip on the exterior of the side panel that would also be siliconned to the edge of the front panel actualy adding 3/4'' of seam to the corner....i would then add two strip 4in wide by the lenght of the aquarium by 1/2 to the top bracing the front pannel (a la eurobracing) with two center brace at the 1/3 and 2/3 mark, these strip would be siliconned to the top of 1/2 panel and 1/4 strip.... basicaly giving this look... i would like your opinion, would you do it like this or should i do it differently......please no uselees comment like ''i know someone who is going to wake to a flood'' i know there is a risk and as i said i will take that risk but i will still make my best to prevent it
NB: the tank had plastic triming on top, but you can definitly see that its a 6 feet tank trim that was cut down to fit 5 feet hence the reason i want to brace it , the trim is pretty useless as it is... ohhh tank is exactly 64x19 1/2x23 3/8
