purplecatfish Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 Is Safety Glass any good for building an aquarium? Perhaps as the bottom? What are the pros and cons? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 my uneducated opinion is that ordinary glass cracks, toughened glass shatters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zayne Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 NOPE!! dont use it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
purplecatfish Posted December 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 NOPE!! dont use it Why? Anyone have an educated opinion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zayne Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 im pretty sure it doesn't allow enough give and breaks easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanmin4304 Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 It depends what you mean by safety glass. Toughened safety glass is cooled rapidly on the outside so that it shatters when broken. It has to be cut to size before it is treated and cannot be cut afterwards. I built a very big tank from some glass that had been doors in a bank and bought 3 doors for $5 in total. They were nearly half inch thick and it worked out well. I have also used laminated glass for the front and bottom of tanks until I was advised that it was only as strong as one thickness of glass because if one breaks so will the other. Water can get in between the layers as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryanjury Posted December 28, 2011 Report Share Posted December 28, 2011 Use the search function Barrie (a glassier that used to keep fish and post quite often) has commented on technical aspects of using safety/toughened glass, but he said not to use it.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angus Posted February 7, 2012 Report Share Posted February 7, 2012 im pretty sure it doesn't allow enough give and breaks easier. Safety or toughened glass, as the name suggests, is a bugger to break. As Alan writes, it has to be cut to size before the toughening treatment because if you try to cut it afterwards, not only is it tougher to cut, the whole pane will break into diced cubes (anybody seen a broken bus shelter window?). Not sure of its suitability for aquarium purposes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Toughened glass has just over 5 times the tensile strength of standard float glass (on average). If you take the same panel and toughen it the safety factor on an aquarium will be significantly higher requiring much more force to break the glass. You can substitute the tensile strength of toughened glass into my glass thickness calculators to see how much extra safety factor you will get. I wouldn't recommend using toughened glass to decrease required thickness, only to improve safety factor. If however you use toughened glass you must also accept its failure mode compared to standard float glass. Typically float glass will crack and water will leak out slowly where toughen glass with utterly shatter like old car windscreens and all the water will burst out at once. I suppose at least it gets it over with quickly... 8) My next tank will use 15mm toughened low iron glass which will end up with a safety factor of just over 22, well above the 3.8 recommended for a good statistical chance of no problems. This is due to the serious earthquake risk in Napier. With a safety factor of 22 it's unlikely the glass will break even if the house falls on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 EQC declined cover??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
#!CrunchBang Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 EQC declined cover??? :smot: But the EQC are removing contents cover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livingart Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 had some 8mm bus windows given to me a while back jumped on them and hit them with a hammer with no result one strike with a dot punch and they fell to pieces though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrahamC Posted February 18, 2012 Report Share Posted February 18, 2012 Hopefully no one is throwing spark plugs and other ceramics inside the house though who can predict what happens in a major quake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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