Need advice on scraping and resiliconing my tank...

[bradleyheathhays]

Just got a second hand 125g tank of questionable integrity so I'm going to go ahead and reseal it all before setting it up. Can anyone point me to a general DIY/FAQ kind of thread on resiliconing your tank?

 

[salt_for_brains]

See if this helps you----- just make sure you give it at least 48 hours of cure time before leak testing it.

DIY Tank Re-Seal Full Instructions - Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community

 

[bradleyheathhays]

Well, I've gotten a lot of help so far and all of the various information sources tend to agree with each other except on this one point. Some give advice that, considering I'm doing a 125g tank I should take the tank completely apart separating the glass panels and top and bottom plastic frame pieces, remove all the silicone, and then rebuild it from scratch. While other advice is to scrape all silicone from the inside of the tank that I can get to making sure not to let the razor slip between the glass panels to compromise that silicone, and then clean and re silicone the inside.

So which advice should I take? Would it be ok to just do it the simpler way, or is breaking the tank all the way down entirely necessary?

 

[salt_for_brains]

I broke my 150g all the way down. One reason was I questioned the integrity of the silicone that was there. Secondly, I like using black silicone instead of clear.

If you feel confident in your ability to reseal the tank I would break it all the way down.

 

[Steveg229]

Do you know how old the tank is? Does it leak now? If it already leaks, I would break it all the way down. If it does not leak, than I would just scrape the inside silicone and reseal. That is what I would do...