Is this a bad seal?

[Guppy Guy]

Hi all, 

I just took down my 10 gallon aquarium to relocate it, but after cleaning it out, I noticed that the edges of the silicone seal are slightly curled. I don’t know if this is recent or if it has always been like that, but I do know that this is the first time I have noticed it. 

My quarantine tank is also a 10 gallon, and I (thankfully) rarely need it, but its silicone seems to be curled as well, albeit slightly less. If it helps any, the relocated tank is a tetra I won in a drawing some 5 years ago, and the quarantine tank is an aqueon I bought about 2 years ago.

If it helps any, I attached an image below.

Thanks.

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/7/2023 at 6:53 PM, Guppy Guy said:

I just took down my 10 gallon aquarium to relocate it, but after cleaning it out, I noticed that the edges of the silicone seal are slightly curled. I don’t know if this is recent or if it has always been like that, but I do know that this is the first time I have noticed it. 

Unfortunately this is just "normal wear and tear" damage.  Better quality tanks will have more clean seals which help to alleviate this.  The other thing to keep in mind is what type of seal you're looking at.  Custom Aquariums and youtube has a lot of videos on sealing a tank.  There's two main stress paths. 

First, you have the glass to glass seam, and depending on the construction of the tank you might have a variety of edge constructions.  Most of them are square ends where one side is attached and the load is horizontal for each side attaching to another side.  Vertical for each bottom edge of the glass touching the bottom surface.

This is the example shown in the left of this image.  The one on the right is the 45 degree angle construction.

 

So, secondarily there is often another bead of silicone used to ensure it's water tight.  This is the seam you're seeing an issue with.  Often when people reseal an aquarium they will replace the inner seal as opposed to completely disassembling the aquarium itself.  It's a lot less work....

[Guppy Guy]

On 1/7/2023 at 11:05 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

So, secondarily there is often another bead of silicone used to ensure it's water tight.  This is the seam you're seeing an issue with.  Often when people reseal an aquarium they will replace the inner seal as opposed to completely disassembling the aquarium itself.  It's a lot less work....

Thanks. Should I do this, or do you think it will be fine? I have some experience with silicone, but not a ton, so there is a good chance that I will mess it up.

[Remi de Groot]

The problem with things like this is that there are no problems untill there are.
A leaking aquarium can be a pain in a lot of ways so i wouldn't take the change and wait to long with it.
But it's also not a matter of days before it goes wrong.

I've reseald a couple of tanks and i actually found it not to hard and a rewarding chore.
So if you have time and want to get some aquarium related experience in a different way you could def do it yourself.
Good thing i found is that it's not hard to 'start over' when failed (just time consuming).

Maybe give it a try on your quarantaine tank first.
When it's done and looks good just do a good water check on a place where a leak is not a problem (outside, shower, garage etc).
The King of DYI has a lot of good video's from back in the day (before he became the hyper youtube

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/8/2023 at 12:09 PM, Guppy Guy said:

Thanks. Should I do this, or do you think it will be fine? I have some experience with silicone, but not a ton, so there is a good chance that I will mess it up.

I view it as... it's a 10G tank, there's a sale, replace it, then decide. 

You should be fine to run it for a little while, unknown how long.  You also might want to swap it for a 20L... etc.  Given the sale right now you have options.  The price of a tank is about the same as a tube of silicone.

On 1/8/2023 at 12:41 PM, Remi de Groot said:

I've reseald a couple of tanks and i actually found it not to hard and a rewarding chore.

1000%

[Guppy Guy]

On 1/8/2023 at 3:41 PM, Remi de Groot said:

Maybe give it a try on your quarantaine tank first.

 

On 1/8/2023 at 8:20 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

I view it as... it's a 10G tank, there's a sale, replace it, then decide.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this. I will use the (practically) new quarantine tank as the main one instead, and then use the one with a bad seal in an upcoming project. 

One more question. Since I am using the quarantine tank, do I need to worry about residue from medications, dormant parasites, etc? I always scrub my tanks, but I don’t want to mess anything up if it doesn’t come off. Note that it has been empty for about 6 months. Thanks in advance.  

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/9/2023 at 7:32 AM, Guppy Guy said:

One more question. Since I am using the quarantine tank, do I need to worry about residue from medications, dormant parasites, etc? I always scrub my tanks, but I don’t want to mess anything up if it doesn’t come off. Note that it has been empty for about 6 months. Thanks in advance.  

Scrubbing is probably what damaged the seal?

Your easiest way is to fill the tank with water and then dose in some white vinegar.  You can run that for an hour or so on a HoB with nothing in it, then treat that as clean.  I tent to sanitize my things by air drying them, even UV is a good way.  Set it outside in the sun for a day. etc.

 

Meds I don't worry about, parasites I would.

[Guppy Guy]

Great, I will try that. 

Thanks so much for the help!