Acrylic tank bubbles

[Wildreefs]

I picked up a used acrylic tank, 1/2 inch acrylic, 56 by 24 wide by 20 tall.

It has a brace on top, and the corner there are angled pieces of acrylic glued into the corners (like rods but angled)

The “rods” have all sorts of bubbles and crazing, and 3 seems look
Clean, the front left corner seems appears to have some bubbles in it. Now the guy told me has the tank running like this for years and never had a leak. The tank was built by a plastic shop that builds retails display cases, not fish tanks, but they did him a favor since he had family that worked there.

Here are some photos, cause for concern? I did like the fact he had it running for at least 3 years and held.

1st pic is the ugly seem, second one seems ok, the bubbles are more on the angled support

 

[UncommonSense]

The angled support is a “corner reinforcement”… likely done by the plastic fabrication shop both because it’s a good idea, and because they aren’t experienced at making watertight joints in acrylic! — these corner reinforcements likely do a lot of heavy lifting for the welded seams between acrylic panels!

The bubbles looks like artifacts of assembly; caused by not thoroughly sanding the faces of the triangular rod which were welded to a perfectly flat, plane finish… — saw tooth, or router bit marks which made “low spots” in the rod will cause this appearance in the finished product if not sanded out….

I’d still pressure test it for a few days before moving it inside! — ideally somewhere where it isn’t in direct sunlight!

 

[Wildreefs]

The angled support is a “corner reinforcement”… likely done by the plastic fabrication shop both because it’s a good idea, and because they aren’t experienced at making watertight joints in acrylic! — these corner reinforcements likely do a lot of heavy lifting for the welded seams between acrylic panels!

The bubbles looks like artifacts of assembly; caused by not thoroughly sanding the faces of the triangular rod which were welded to a perfectly flat, plane finish… — saw tooth, or router bit marks which made “low spots” in the rod will cause this appearance in the finished product if not sanded out….

I’d still pressure test it for a few days before moving it inside! — ideally somewhere where it isn’t in direct sunlight!

There is the three seems that seam ok, it’s that one corner where you can see imperfections in the seem. I don’t believe those rods are water tight, they don’t go all the way to the bottom, they kind of stop short and have a half inch gap from the bottom, like they don’t go all the way down, so I’m guess water can pool up up from the bottom in between the actual tank and the rods . The guy had a video of tank filled with freshwater , said it never leaked . Looks like trash I know, but after a glass tank leaked on me a few weeks ago, I’m more about not leaking then cosmetics it’s that what they all hopefully are

 

[UncommonSense]

That’s interesting! Could you get a picture or two of the questionable seam right near the bottom?