Seems on Acrylic Tank

[Joel B in FL]

I just got my new tank delivered and while I was cleaning it getting ready to start the plumbing I noticed that some of the seems had some bubbles in them. Is that normal for an acrylic tank?

 

[LAReef]

That's not good

 

[Lowell Lemon]

The small bubbles are of no concern but I am having a hard time with the bottom picture. Is the bubble next to the seam or through the acrylic seam? If is throught the seam you should return the tank for a replacement.

 

[TaylorPilot]

The first ones aren't that bad, but the 2nd one has me concerned. What do you think @Floyd R Turbo ?

 

[TaylorPilot]

Wait, is the 2nd one a black panel laminated on top of a clear one? If so, the clear seam looks fine. It is hard to see what we are looking at. Maybe zoom out a little and take another picture of the effected area. Also, what thickness are the panels, and size of the tank.

 

[Joel B in FL]

It is a 180 gallon tank. I am not entirely sure of the panel thickness will need to measure when I get home.

From looking at the holes drilled for the return it does look like there is a black sheet of acrylic in front of a thicker clear sheet. I only took a couple of pics before I had to leave for work this morning I will try to swing by and get a couple more on my lunch break.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics]

It looks to me like in both of these pics the super tiny bubbles are the reflection of the lamination piece. The black panel was laminated to the clear panel either before or after the tank was built, so bubbles around the edge of that black panel probably don't impact structural integrity at all, unless the clear panel is thinner so that the 2 panels together are considered structural.

Thick black material is a lot more expensive so some builders will laminate a thin piece of black over the clear piece. This is generally OK but it's good practice to built the walls using the correct thickness then consider the laminate just a color layer. So if you thin out the clear wall because the colored wall adds thickness, to me that's pushing it a but but not horrible...I don't think that's what happened here because of that second pic

The small bubbles in the first pic are in the structural seam, sometimes those are really hard to avoid, those don't look horrible. Per the above, the larger ones are over the black part so probably not a concern.

That second pic looks bad but again this is why I think that is just a lamination for color, maybe the edge didn't line up perfectly and left a gap that couldn't be filled or something, but that edge (the black edge) may not need to be structurally bonded to the adjacent material so it's just cosmetic. the clear-to-clear material joint looks like glass = good

 

[Joel B in FL]

I forgot to snap some pics when I was at home just now but it is like you thought. There is a thin piece of black acrylic glued to the thicker one in back. The back clear panel is as thick as the front panel so there should be no issues with thickness. Thanks to everyone for the replies.