[HybridS130]

So I bought this 55 gallon tank from a yardsale for $10 two or three weeks ago. I spent the first couple of days cleaning it and scraping away the old silicone that had to be removed anyway because it was peeling along the edges. I've never resealed a tank before but, I did lots of research about it on both this forum and a few others.

The first time I attempted to reseal it I laid the bead on too thin and wasn't happy with how it turned out so, I started the process of removing it. The second time I was told to mask off the area around the bead with masking tape before hand so that I would get a smoother edge. When I attempted to remove the tape immediately after laying down the silicone I pulled up the top layer that had already started to cure. Needless to say it was ruined so I scraped off as much of the silicone as I could by hand and allowed the rest to cure and scraped it off with a razor.

So last night I was up to the third time and I was sick of failure at this point so I made sure I had scraped off as much silicone as humanly possible, I probably spent several hours on that alone. Then I cleaned the glass with both alcohol and acetone several times. I taped up the area around the bead with 3M smooth release masking tape (the $5 a roll stuff haha). I worked each seam at a time smoothing it with my finger (that I kept wet at all times) and then immediately I removed the masking tape for that particular bead.

All in all it came out much better but, Im still not happy with it because it doesn't look like the silicone laid down by the tank manufacturers. I think Im putting too much oh and Im not able to smooth it out evenly because of the amount I have on so it looks chunky. I will let it cure completely and then tank it outside to water test it. If it holds then I will ignore how ugly it is and then I'll proceed to setting up my tank. If it doesn't hold then I'll either give away the tank and take a loss or turn it into either a terrarium or vivarium.


My plans for this tank, . . honestly Im not sure yet but, I do think Im either going with another african cichlid tank or a fully planted community tank. Either way I'm going to use a DIY hood with the "you put it together" VHO twin bulbs so that I'll have 4 watts per gallon. This will be more than enough for any planted tank and I might have to find ways to diffuse it a little. If I go with a cichlid tank then this should give me a nice lush layer of bright green algae on the rockwork.