I made a bad decision a few weeks back and purchasing a used lee-mar 187g. The tank was perfect dimensions and what I was looking for. I purchased it off OfferUp but the guy that was selling is a member on a local forum here. Well I let my excitement get the best of me. I was told the tank held water (it did) and just had 1 moon on the bottom of the front pain that wasn’t even noticeable when on the stand. So being that I’ve done business with him before I trusted him. Well after getting the tank home and giving it a good cleaning I started noticing a few flaws in the silicone. By flaws I mean large bubbles where the silicone was starting to separate from the glass.
My first thought was to load the tank back up into my truck and take it to the dump. But while doing my cardio it hit me, why not try to re-build the tank. So this will be my attempt at re-building a Lee-Mar tank. I did notice that the glass looked to be in pretty good shape, a handful of small scratches and minimal etching from algae.
So I started by getting the Eurobrace off. The silicone was so weak that I really didn’t have to cut much of the silicone to pull the Eurobrace off. It took about 10 min to get all 5 pieces off
Nest was the overflow box. By fare the overflow gave me the most hassle to get off. I thought for sure it was going to be fairly easy too sense I’ve always head that silicone and acrylic don’t bond the strongest together. It took close to 30 min to get the overflow box out.
Then I took the back pain off
Then the front pain
last the sides
In all it took me an hour and 15 min to tear the tank down in to pieces
So after getting the tank apart here comes the really fun part and removing all the old silicone. Well luckily the silicone was so weak that a lot of it was pretty easy to just pull off. I even posted this vid of how easy the silicone was coming off the glass
Well after a week of scraping silicone when I had some free time I got all the large pains of glass clear and free of any silicone residue.
But now I’ve run into another issue I was to fix and this is calcium deposit etching. As shown in this picture
also here is the moon that was discussion earlier
So now not am I only going to rebuild this tank but now I’m going to restore the glass.
I’ve purchased a glass sanding and polishing kit, a lot of extra sanding discs, and a orbital sander. I currently waiting on these items to be delivered in order to continue on this project.
I also purchased a lot of masking tape, 4 10.2oz tubes of black aquarium silicone, 4 corner clamps, a good scraper kit with 200+ extra razors, and a external overflow kit.
So far I’m into this project about $450 with the tank and all the tools, extras.
My first thought was to load the tank back up into my truck and take it to the dump. But while doing my cardio it hit me, why not try to re-build the tank. So this will be my attempt at re-building a Lee-Mar tank. I did notice that the glass looked to be in pretty good shape, a handful of small scratches and minimal etching from algae.
So I started by getting the Eurobrace off. The silicone was so weak that I really didn’t have to cut much of the silicone to pull the Eurobrace off. It took about 10 min to get all 5 pieces off
Nest was the overflow box. By fare the overflow gave me the most hassle to get off. I thought for sure it was going to be fairly easy too sense I’ve always head that silicone and acrylic don’t bond the strongest together. It took close to 30 min to get the overflow box out.
Then I took the back pain off
Then the front pain
last the sides
In all it took me an hour and 15 min to tear the tank down in to pieces
So after getting the tank apart here comes the really fun part and removing all the old silicone. Well luckily the silicone was so weak that a lot of it was pretty easy to just pull off. I even posted this vid of how easy the silicone was coming off the glass
Bad tank silicone
youtube.com
But now I’ve run into another issue I was to fix and this is calcium deposit etching. As shown in this picture
also here is the moon that was discussion earlier
I’ve purchased a glass sanding and polishing kit, a lot of extra sanding discs, and a orbital sander. I currently waiting on these items to be delivered in order to continue on this project.
I also purchased a lot of masking tape, 4 10.2oz tubes of black aquarium silicone, 4 corner clamps, a good scraper kit with 200+ extra razors, and a external overflow kit.
So far I’m into this project about $450 with the tank and all the tools, extras.