Hi everybody, Joey here again and welcome back
so today we're going to talk about how to properly drill a glass aquarium
now before we get started...
we have to first determine if we can even drill that glass aquarium
what I mean by that is..
is the glass that you're drilling going to be tempered
or not
now tempered glass, if you try to drill it
it's going to shatter into a million pieces
whereas regular plate glass or float glass will allow you to drill it
so first and foremost we have to find out
if it's tempered or not
but how are you going to do that? Well very simple actually
most aquariums will have a sticker on the bottom of the aquarium that says
bottom pane is tempered do not drill
so obviously we're not going to drill that pane,
we know it's tempered
another option is to simply contact the manufacturer
and ask them, based on the aquarium that you have,
is it / did they use tempered glass or not
those two methods are typically the pretty easy methods to do
but
if it's an older tank, you don't know who built it and it doesn't have any stickers...
then you're going to have to find out if it's still tempered or not because you don't want to shatter the glass
so one method of doing so is looking at the glass through a polarised lens
what do I mean by a polarised lens? Well a lot of sunglasses come with polarised lenses
or, in the case that I'm going to show you,
3D glasses that you get at a movie theatre
for free usually
are er
mostly using polarised lenses
Now what's this going to do? Well if you look at tempered glass through a, er,
what's going to happen is that it's going to expose
a couple of things
when you look through polarised glass
or glasses at a tempered glass
it's going to show black lines, or black dots
now how do you know if you're glasses are even polarised?
well
You're going to first have to find a piece of glass that is guaranteed to be tempered
what I suggest doing is go out to a car in your parking lot, or use your own car
and look through your back windshield
back windshields as well as front windshields are typically always tempered
but the back windshield is always tempered for sure
on newer cars anyway
you don't have a car? just go look at somebody else's in the parking lot or on the street, whatever
anyways
so, when you have your glasses and you hold them a few inches away from your face
and look at the actual back pane of the window
you'll see what happens...
if nothing happens then you're not using polarised glasses
you'll have to find a pair that are
but using your back windshield is definitely a good test subject to see if the glasses are even polarised in the first place
one you've figured out that you have polarised glasses
and you can tell the difference between tempered and non-tempered
but once you have that you can now go look at your aquarium
and see if it's tempered as well
that's pretty much it
if it's tempered don't drill it
if it isn't tempered go ahead and drill it
so to drill a hole in your aquarium you're going to need
a diamond coded hole saw
they come in various sizes
and drill various sized holes obviously
these are relatively inexpensive
ranging from anywhere from 8 - 15 dollars
that would cover almost every size you would need
anywhere from a half inch to upwards of an inch and a half, two inches
now what size
hole saw will you need for your bulk head?
and how much, what size bulk head should you be using
well the bulk head is determined by
how much water flow you want in your aquarium
each bulk head is going to flow at a different rate
especially depending on the placement, whether it's in the back wall
on a side wall, or in the base of the aquarium
now I've created a chart on diyfishkeepers.com that will show you
exactly how much flow a bulk head will get
also
a chart on what size hole saw you'll need for what sized bulk head
so now that we know
what size bulk head we need and
what size hole saw we need
we can now get started with drilling the actual aquarium
so starting out
you're going to want to place,
find out where you want to drill you're hole
you're going to place your pattern in place
and using this pattern will actually allow you to mimic
that exact same hole on many aquariums
so you can get the exact same height
on every aquarium that you drill
and exact same placement
so we want to take our gasket
and our
our guide and have it handy
once you figure out where the hole is going
you're going to take some duct tape
and tape it under where that hole is going to be
the reason being is that because when you drill that piece of glass out
it has the potential of falling and cracking the pane that's below it
so this piece of duct tape is strong enough to hold that piece of glass from falling
and not allow the drill to actually drill through the tape as well
so with both in place
and everything clamped down we can go ahead and pour some water
inside of the hole
now because we're using a gasket and clamping it in place
the water's not going to go anywhere
it's going to stay in place
now you can place the actual
drill bit inside of the guide
and start off drilling starting off slow and holding it level
you don't have to start it off on an angle or anything like that
just hold it level
go nice and slow at first and then you can speed it up
typically speaking a 6mm glass should only take about 60 seconds or less
to drill
anything thicker like half inch
which is 12mm should take no longer than 2 minutes to drill
you'll get used to it as time goes by
you're not applying any pressure you're just letting the weight of the drill do all the work
so don't push on it
eventually
you'll hear the water dripping through the bottom as the glass starts to drill all the way through
eventually that glass is going to be falling out
and the tape will catch it
from there you can wipe everything up with a towel
and your hole is finished
if you notice some sharp edges or anything like that which you typically shouldn't
you can sand it down with some 60 grit sand paper or something
of like and make it more soft
from there you can install your bulk head
the bulk head
obviously goes, with the gasket, goes on the inside of the aquarium
the bulk head slides in
and then screws on
all you're looking to do is hand tighten that
then possibly take a wrench and give it a quarter twist or a half twist
from there, you should be fine
now some bulk heads tend to leak constantly
no matter how tight you make them so what I suggest doing is instead of
having that gasket if you have a leaky gasket or a leaky bulk head
you drain the tank
and instead of using the gasket use silicone
silicone the bulk head right in place
it's not permanent you could take it off eventually if you needed to
but this is going to be a for sure thing so it doesn't leak
anyways guys
that's how I drill a glass aquarium
I hope you guys find something useful in this video
I definitely want to thank you for watching
and we'll see you next time