Ziggy953's 150 Build errrr....120 Build

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Well after much talking with other people I have decided to remove the oak from the top of my stand.

Here is a level on the stand and you can clearly see the gap so I think the surface of the stand started the problem...
1011672smallbk3.jpg


After removing all the oak the plywood is much better though still not perfect. There is a 1/16" gap in a few places. I put the Hardibacker board on top of the plywood and that reduced the gap even more. I'm still a little jumpy about putting the tank on there and filling it. I don't want another flood.....
 
Thinking about it again, since I'm not sure how all this stuff works, I would think a crack in the bottom would be from previous stress or the glass being weak/not up to the task, like bad temper-ment. Or that bottom middle brace was out of whack a little?

What is Tempered Glass?

This says that tempered glass once broken shatters, also
Tempered glass might also fail long after the event that caused the failure. Stresses continue to play until the defect erupts, triggering breakage of the entire panel.
Click to expand...
Well I guess your tank may be acrylic, then it shows how much of a noob I am, lol
 
No it is glass...and that is the interesting thing about the way it cracked. It is a single crack running from one side to the other not shattered like tempered glass....I don't know but I'm at a stand still right now....
 
To me the foam, which I'm pretty sure is high density stuff. Like you can jump on it and it deforms only slightly. It would act as a leveling device, which is how/why you were using it in the 1st place, as long as the edges dont dig in so much to be pushing up on the bottom. I assume that since the middle braces look like thin metal and from what little I've read/seen that they only support sides( I know the top one does, just assuming the bottom brace is the same/similar). So in fact the bottom glass is supporting all of the weight, you would think that the seems would leak if it was not level before it would crack or break.

You may never know what exactly caused it, maybe if you looked closely along the crack with a magnifying glass, you could possibly see some small nicks near the "fault line" (crack) that are not part of the actual crack. Then you could assume this was from some impact and what caused the stress(at some time previously). Alternatively if the crack did start at the edge, then I guess not being level could be the cause.

Did it recently have water before you got it? How old was the tank?

Any way, I think it was more of a random incident, and your methods seem sound to me.
 
I just got off the phone with Perfecto and they say DO NOT put foam under their tanks. The plastic trim on the edges and the center are designed to hold the tank. They recomend of course buying their stand with the tank but say that the tank needs to be sitting on a flat level surface with all points of the trim touching that surface.

So the foam is out and it is time for me to make sure that the top is flat and level...
 
Plastic in the middle is not holding anything except the sides from bowing out from what I can tell. The glass is holding all the weight the plastic is just to keep it "square" for the seals. They prob also cant be sure how good of foam your using either, as I'm sure there are many types of thicknesses/densities, but neither you nor I know how good it is either, lol.

I guess its time to find the perfectly level wood or get the sander out
 
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Well if i had to take a stab at this crack thing i would say it was a combination of the foam and when you put it on the stand. If you put it down a bit hard and one corer hit before the other it would put a deeper indentation in the foam then the rest. So when it was just sitting there one corner would be lower then the other three so when you filled it with water it would be like if three corners were on the edge of a counter and the last one is hanging over and then you put all the weight in the corner from the water and rock and it would crack right between the two corners that were supported on the "edge of the counter". It wouldn't take much bend in the bottom to crack the glass.
 
I used to build custom cabinets for a living...I built the stand myself. It is a solid stand the top was not flat but it wasn't as much of an issue with the 72. This tank covers the entire surface of the stand.

I have it on the stand now. The only place that wasn't touching was along part of the front and about 3 or so inches back on the center brace. I have the hardibacker board shimed along the front edge and the tank is touching all the way around now....I'm going to fill it with FW again and see how it does.

BTW SpeedEuphoria the center brace on the bottom is made differently then the center brace on the top. The brace on the bottom is designed to hold load the same as the outside trim.
 
cogburn said:
was this a diy stand or did you buy it?
Click to expand...

Yeah like he said it's DIY and he did do it for a living back in the day. He totally knows what he's doing with that. Plus you should have see him build something out of wood cabinets or other wise... LOL, The best way I can put it is OCD to the EXTREME! You know the saying measure twice cut once, yeah he's more like measure 10 times cut once! And he really takes his time with projects. LOL as you can see with this upgrade. UGH...

But on a good note, either I'm getting used to the smell or it's starting to go away. :D
 
Well the tank is FULL of FW...all looks very good....The trim was touching all the way around the tank before we started filling it. I'm feeling a little better about things now....I think after draining it the sand will go in and we will start the process again.
 
Sounds like you got it all figured out. In regards to aquascaping, do you guys plan on attempting the valley in the middle since the 120 is shorter than the 150?
 
If I have my choice I think I would like to do the aquascaping as close to how we did it the last time with the "sandy cove." Ya know the way we did BEFORE TRAGEDY Hit! But all in all Allen's the Boss!

4Real when we started all this Saturday I really thought it would take at most until Allen went to work Sunday, little did I know it would go on for almost a week.
neilanh ~ LOL, you want to take back for offer to come help this weekend... the way things have been going we just might still be working on this.



LOL
 
She means on the very short lived 150....we were going to set it up like the 72 but with all the rock we have it didn't work out that way. We made a nice little cove on the right center of the tank. We are going to try recreate as closely as we can what we did in the 150.
 
One thing I have learned about aquascaping, is that once you take it down or move it around, it is way harder than you would think to put it back how it was.
I look forward to seeing new pictures of how you set it up, I'm sure it will look awesome.
 
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