Can large aggressive fish damage acrylic tank?

[Triggreef]

Asking for a friend who got a huge acrylic tank to house a really big puffer and some others. I told him he should go with glass but no one ever takes my advice so... Now worrying that the foot long plus puffer might damage the acrylic at feeding time. He bites at the glass all the time at feeding time in the current tank. I've had acrylic damaged by things like urchins and learned the hard way, so i might just be over cautious with acrylic. But let me know if you have any experience with this so I can pass on the info.

 

[TopShelfAquatics]

Once you get to a certain size tank you have to go with acrylic and we've had some customers with some very large tanks full of all kinds of aggressive fish and they have never had problems with them damaging the acrylic in any way. 9 times out of 10 when the acrylic is damaged is due to human error during clean up. Now with that said we'v never seen a puffer just try to chew on a tank. It is entirely possible that it could scratch the acrylic, but not something that we have commonly seen.

 

[o2manyfish]

Depends on the type of puffer. With porcupine it's not an issue. But a dog face, sapo, golden sapo - that have the big beak at the front can.

When I had a Golden in a 300g FO tank he went back and forth along the acrylic panel and definitely scratched a swim path line in the tank. Pretty consistent straight line - about 2.5" from the surface on both the long viewing panels (Tank was in the middle of room - clear on all sides).

After a couple of months I rehomed the puffer. We polished the tank (with the inhabitants still in it) and all history of the puffer being in the tank was erased.

Dave B