Acrylic tank repair?

[turbonegro]

Just won a auction on Ebay for a 350gal acylic tank($510). The tank is used and has two 2 1/4 inch holes drilled on the side. I wanted to know if there is a company in the area that can fill in the holes and buff the whole tank? I live in york. Any help would be much apprecaited. Thanks Bobby

 

[zooqi]

I don't know anybody who can do in the area but if you want to close the holes is easy. You can do one of the two.
One : put a bulkhead and then put a cap on it.
Two : Thick piece of acrylic, clean the area, use acrylic cement and glue that piece on the hole. You need a piece that is a little bigger than the size of the hole. I personally will use bulkhead methode just in case if you need those holes in the future.

As for buffing it I would leave it the way that is and scratches won't show as much once you fill the tank but if they are bad you can buy buffing stuff and do it yourself but will cost you some money. I have done it in the past and is alot of work.

 

[coralnut99]

The best I could think of in terms of a "company" that might buff it out would be a local plastics house that fabricates acrylic displays etc. The yellow pages should do it for you. It's gotta cost a good bit of $ though, since you'll pay a shop labor rate plus profit, and the process is just slow. If you buff acrylic too hard or fast, it overheats and you'll see hairline cracks develop. Try filling it first to see how bad it looks when full, and see if you can live with it the way it is. A stated earlier, they tend to look a lot worse when empty. There's a bunch of buffing systems you can use if you decide to do it yourself. Just do a search in the DIY forum on acrylic scratch repair earlier in the morning when the search engine's not so boogered up.

 

[jnc914]

You can use Micro-mesh to buff it. I ordered the system online and it worked awesome, but it is alot of work. i had to restore a 280 gallon and it took me roughly a week, 3-4 hours a day to do the deeper scratches. Minor scratches can't be seen now that there is water in the tank. As for a company to buff it, I have not heard of any. Nice pick up on the 350, good luck with it.