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Another tank bites the dust. Soaked floor again..

By the way, the fish have settled and all is quiet, whether good or bad. The corys are no longer jumping around.
My big clown loach has found his old cave which I moved from the other tank. He's odd. I hoped for a change and that he'd join the other 6 clown loaches which always stay together but he insists on being a loner when "sleeping"

Also, I vacuumed most of the sand. But there's sand stuck to the silicone which doesn't want to come off? It's all over it. It's really odd that it's stuck. Maybe I can use something that will help wipe it off? It's not coming off with a brush. Any ideas?

And one more question. There's a silicone rim outside the tank. It's well above the actual silicone inside. It's above the black rim all around the tank bottom. I am not sure what it is for. Here is a bad picture of it:

DSCF7991_zpshsuvhj5g.jpg
 
Also a question to ian_m if you are around.
There's is a slight unlevel problem going on.

These are pictures of it below. The level basically says the water is heavier at the back where the leak is, meaning that side is lower. And actually the level points exactly at that leaking corner. If you imagine looking at a tank from the front, it's the right back corner that's leaking. The level I am using shows the level at the back of the tank is lower than the front and also the right side of the tank slightly lower than the left too which points exactly to this right back corner. Took it 5 years to leak...

However, when I place the level on the ground itself, it's the total opposite story, the floor is lower at the front. So why is my tank lower at the back when the floor is lower at the front?

I know this is without water in it, but I am pretty certain it's about the same when there was water in it. I measured it when my other tank leaked as I was freaking out at the time. I actually thought this was pretty much levelled enough but maybe not.....

Back to front glass of tank (left to right on picture)
Level2_zpsdebnbmnb.jpg


And left to right side of the tank on the long side. It's not very much but the right side looking at the front of the tank, is lower.
Tank%20Level_zpsmvkixd0g.jpg
 
sciencefiction said:
By the way, the fish have settled and all is quiet, whether good or bad. The corys are no longer jumping around.
My big clown loach has found his old cave which I moved from the other tank. He's odd. I hoped for a change and that he'd join the other 6 clown loaches which always stay together but he insists on being a loner when "sleeping"
Click to expand...

I do not know how the weather is in Ireland 🙂 over here the weather is quite jumpy lattely.. Temperatures are constantly rising and lowering again within days and sometimes 6 degrees difference within days time. This also triggers fish behaivor and in smaller tanks fluctuate even more, this is even more noticable when the tank is bit overstocked i guess.

I come to notice this morning had almost 4 days around 29,5 degrees tank temperature and this morning it plummeted 4 degrees over night. The whole tank is frenzy, shrimps racing like chainsaws and cory's which normaly dont see so much are higly active swiming around. I looked outside the window and i see the goldfish in the garden doing excactly the same racing around constantly bumping eachother and even wiggling over the floating vegitation together, somewhat like spawning behaivor.

Might be just that in your case the coincidental leaking during and sudden changes in temp and maybe invironment trigering hormones.. 🙂 The tank of lust.
 
sciencefiction said:
The tank is on a carpet.
Click to expand...
Make sure the back legs are not sitting on the carpet grippers, this will cause the stand to be uneven. Need to be say 5-10cm away from carpet edge.

For bowing of the bottom of the tank you are looking for two opposite corners (or just one corner) being a different height that the others. Only need a mm or two difference to cause issues.

I assume the tank is sat on a foam base between stand and tank ? A foam base is normally used to compensate for slight stand unevenness and protect the bottom sheet of glass.

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/aquarium-stand
 
Thanks for the reply Ian.
The tank is away from the wall and not on the carpet grippers. I checked this already. Plus it's the back that is lower, not the front even though the floor is the opposite.
The tank itself has a floating base and by instructions from the manufacturer is placed straight over the stand. The bottom glass basically does not touch the stand.
There could be a twist at the front opposite corner but it's a curved glass so no silicone there in the corner, just at the bottom glass so maybe that's why it didn't leak from there.

Basically the level is telling me to raise the back but the floor itself is sloped towards the front which is the odd part.
Anyway, if I have to raise the back it's going to be very difficult. Plus shimming legged stand....not sure how to do it properly.
 
zozo said:
Temperatures are constantly rising and lowering again within days and sometimes 6 degrees difference within days time. This also triggers fish behaivor and in smaller tanks fluctuate even more, this is even more noticable when the tank is bit overstocked i guess.
Click to expand...

I actually did raise the temperature a few degrees because of the clown loaches. That tank was sitting at 24C and now its 26C so maybe that triggered some hyper behaviour.
My baby clown loach started hand feeding again. He used to in the small tank I quarantined him in while he lived with a bunch of baby platies. When I moved him into the "leaking tank" with the rest of the clown loaches he wouldn't approach me anymore. There were no platies in there. Now in this tank, that is overstocked, he's again amongst all the platies coming to my hand for food with them like he used to 🙂
 
sciencefiction said:
There's tiny bit of silicone between the glass panels and it's hard removing that
Click to expand...
Unless you can see this silicone is not bonded (ie bubbles ?) I would leave be, just cut as much off as possible from the silicone fillet using a very sharp craft knife. Don't use silicone remover, fantastic stuff, breaks the bond between silicone and glass so silicone peels of leaving no residue, just in case it soaks into the seam and causing it to debond.

If you really want to remove the silicone between the panels, you use fine fishing wire or steel wire to cut between the panels. This obviously entails removing & resiliconing the whole panel, which is probably not necessary for your repair.
 
Thanks Ian. I cut into some of that bonding silicone by accident but the glass is held by frames all over so I don't think it will fall apart. I surely don't want that. I'll make sure I force some new silicone in there after.
I am getting by well with the razor blades. I had to wait a bit for my finger to heal but I am 3/4ths done now.
I found 3 places where water came out from behind the silicone. The leaking corner I saw initially, the middle back side of the tank at the bottom and the front bottom corner but not the one opposite the leaking back corner. I haven't reached the other side yet but it looks to me the tank is leaking from all over the bottom silicone.

And look at the small amount of silicone there was by the manufacturer. That's actually how thick it is. I was able to cut it intact. That's the entire width from the front bottom all over. There's more silicone on the vertical corners but very little at the bottom glass.

Silicone_zpsri3ellkh.jpg
 
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I still haven't received the silicone. I think it takes at least a week from the UK and then again I am not ready with cleaning the tank yet. And I need to perfectly level it too.
My poor fish. It's a sore view at feeding time. Imagine a big common pleco sweeping around like a hover amongst tens of corys trying to get something, platies that eat from everywhere, top, bottom, middle, bunching up fish in a pile of all kinds, and clown loaches that just grab the food and try to run somewhere with it but there's nowhere to hide.... I just refuse to watch them while they feed....It's painful. It's like watching kids in Africa fighting for food.

I still see shrimp all around unbothered, no snails though....but then again I never had many snails in there.

I think my emersed plants are doing great now, no nitrogen deficiencies this week and I've been having problems with that, yey.
The water quality has been keeping up without spikes which is great but I've been doing quite the water changes every other day or third day.

On a positive note, the big common pleco is like a snake in there. He has not uprooted or damaged any plants. And he ignores the bristlenose pleco completely. But he isn't happy at all. I tore his tail and fins a bit when trying to catch him. I did that 4 years ago when I moved him too and he ran away from me for 2 years afterwards. I don't think we'll be friends again for a while.

I am dreading the time when I will have to catch fish to move back again. It's nearly impossible catching anything without doing a big mess...

Sometimes you just wonder why going through all this trouble just to keep fish. The point is to keep them healthy and happy but then everything goes against you and them all the time and breaks your heart.
 
sciencefiction said:
Sometimes you just wonder why going through all this trouble just to keep fish. The point is to keep them healthy and happy but then everything goes against you and them all the time and breaks your heart.
Click to expand...

Don't despair :shh:

It is the difficult times that really make you appreciate the good times.
I hope you can get the tank sorted and the fish back into their home. Then I'm sure you'll be able to rediscover some of the joy that currently feels so lacking.

Good luck!
 
I have removed all the silicone from the tank, well....at least 99.9% of it.
I went over wiping with rubbing alcohol a couple of times, I probably have to go over again as I keep finding the tiniest bits of silicone invisible to the naked eye.
It was a tough job at first but I got really good at removing the silicone in the end. Although I never want to do this again 🙂

Any tips on how to re-silicone it best? I understand I have to work pretty quickly while applying the silicone. I am going to use some masking tape to prevent a mess but I am more concerned about quality of the seal and not aesthetics.
I understand I need go over all the bottom and edges fast enough all at once. Then smear the silicone well with my finger and then remove the masking tape. Is that it? Then I wait 48 hours or a week?

It says the silicone becomes tack free in 10-20 min so I've got apply the silicone in less than 10 min all over the tank?
And full cure is 3mm per day? So how many days before a water test?

I hope the silicone arrives early next week.
 
If you never did it, go do some pieces of scrap glass first, maybe some old photoframes. Just to get the feel. I just lay down a "line"and stand the glass in it. Should be plenty on youtube.
 
Shouldn't be a problem. It never made me fail. There should be plenty succesfull videos on youtube. Just don't need to do the whole tank at once, glue two panels together, let it dry, do the next the next dayt, easy peasy.





etc etc
 
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