hey everyone how are you idiot Mike here and today i have an empty tank behind me.
What we are going to do with this tank here is that we're gonna reseal it
so we've noticed that the integrity of the silicone is really not holding up
the par there's a lot of bubbles within it and within the inside of the tank
especially near the bottom at the front it is really not looking that well we
don't want to repeat and what happened with their other 75 gallon so I think
the best thing we can do now is just to reseal it. So we're going to get a little
bit of help with this from Kevin he's going to come over and show us his
masterful skills in resealing so what we were going to do now is we're just going
to prep for this we're going to tear out all the old silicone and for that we're
going to need a couple things. We are going to need a few scrapers. Now I have
a couple different sizes the smaller ones are just a little bit easier to get
in some places and I got a little bit bigger and then medium-sized one and I
also have a caulking puller now this here is really good for the corners it
allows you just to get into the crack and pull up. We're going to give you
some better footage of this as we start tearing it apart,
but before that .the last thing that we're going to need in order to do this
is some acetone now there's going to be some safety precautions obviously when
using acetone in fact we're not going to do this tonight we're going to wait till
tomorrow when it's a little bit warmer out so we can have the door open with
the fan blowing to get some more circulation here because this stuff here
is really strong. So we're gonna wait til this we're gonna wait for this till
tomorrow and we're basically just gonna start tearing this tank apart so as you
can see from the furniture I was showing you the tank here is in pretty bad shape.
It's time for a reseal so let's start with the process
Stripping silicone is a very tedious task. It took me up to about three hours
probably to fully scraped and acetone wipe down the tank. So I'm gonna share a few
tips here that can save you a lot of time and make this process a little bit
easier. The first thing is the use of a razor blade or a scraper
really come in handy. What you want to do is scrape down both sides of the
glass along the edge of the seam and this will lift the silicone up on both
sides. if you have a puller you can easily pull the silicone right off with
a puller and even if you don't and you're using a scraper and it allows you
to pull it off in a big piece and usually takes off quite a bit of even the
small residue too. So it's kind of better to take it off in a bigger piece
if you can. A razor blade works really well to clean off the glass and also remove
the fine film in your cleanup. but be careful when you're removing the
silicone that you don't dig into the adhesive that holds the tank together.
You'll have to completely tear down the tank and you don't want to have to do
that, so don't dig into that too far at all. The next step here is when you're
using acetone to wipe for the remaining silicone off and only use a little tiny
bit on the rag in a well-ventilated area and basically you want to stay away from
the corners and edges. Your goal here is to really just take away the silicone.
You really don't want to go near that adhesive
because the acetone will destroy that adhesive and you'll have to completely
tear down your tank and start from scratch
all right so we are ready now to get the silicon but I first have to do a couple
more things. This is Kevin here from Northern Ontario Aquarium Hobby go check
him out . I'll put the link in the description down below.
Go check out his channel yeah so uh yeah Mike I already went through
obviously the issues that he was having with the bubbling and the drying of
silicone and pulling away. thankfully for one i mean one this has a rim but also it
hadn't gone far enough that there was an actual separating in the glass.
Then it would have been a much much bigger job it would have been literally
the full tear down, rip it apart and rebuild the tank. Mike got it all
cleaned up really well he used the acetone there and cleaned
off at any of the excess so now it's a nice smooth because one thing like you
know, it has to be very clean for the new silicone to bond. exactly! New
silicone does not bond to old silicone pretty much at all. Yeah you can get away
you know, if it's not a hundred percent clean you can get away. but try and do it as
best you can. So first thing that you're gonna want to do to make sure that you
do a nice-looking job. So we use painters tape to get a nice edge
you know because this stuff has minimum tack but will hold at
least long enough. again just based on the the basic thickness of the tank
we're probably going to be looking at doing you want about a quarter a quarter
inch okay gap or so. So then that way it's gonna provide enough you know but
you don't want to have like these massive visible seam of silicone.... my last
attempt I think you did like three-quarters of an inch to an inch so
I think that was a that was a fail on my part so you couldn't work whatever you a
bit overkill but the thing is to all obviously the wider of a space you're
using that means usually ends up means some of the center bits it's a bit
deeper than what you want yeah right and it'll take longer to cure and
like that but so yeah we'll get to taping it up and then we'll get into
there and seal it up. okay perfect yeah. okay so we have got the
tank completely taped up now as you can see so the next step is we've got to do some
silicone. Now I'm not very good at siliconeing. so this is why we have
Kevin over here. He's done multiple tanks of his own and he's gonna show us how to
do this tank so hopefully we can do the next couple on here own right? Mine
haven't failed yet so no promises. One quick thing, just as you know we taped it
out. You just always want to make sure that your corners are square right? so
there is gonna be an overlap obviously between your tapes on the
bottom and your tapes going up the side but as long as your corners are a little
bit squared it just makes for a cleaner line when you re pulling it off and
that's it. Sort of run your finger along the the bottom of the tape
that's gonna be facing the bead just to make sure it is secure but enough so
you're not getting anything seeping underneath Which again is just gonna
create a mess now as you're siliconing and everything like that. Pretty much
you're looking to do maybe about a quarter inch bead as even as you can
without any gaps in it. If you're not a professional calker or
anything like that and you're not good at it. That's fine if it if it doesn't
look great as long as you're getting at least a steady bead coming. because once
you go through and clean it up Mike's got a little tool there that you
can use that has like a sharp manager round edge in this case if you're doing
the tank if you wanted to use that round edge I typically just use my finger just
because I like... and we tapped it so it doesn't really matter much anyway.. exactly
and I also like to just have that tactile feel like I know where I'm going
along and everything like that to make sure I'm going smooth but either way
works for you. I found with using this for my own personal experience I was
using this rounded corner and using like a tube and a half right just on the
bottom because it leaves such a big gap. so well if you can master with your
finger and if it's already taped it's probably a better idea just to do it
like that. And that's the thing because when you're when you're doing this
process the point I find that those can sometimes
lift more silicone out really all you're trying to do is just smooth it down so
it's so it's sealed on both sides and so it's a nice clean look you know and
that's why again I like using my finger because I feel the the pressure a little
bit nicer. So again you want to try to keep as straight and steady of a about beading as
you can as you're going through typically it's always better to do the
bottoms first and then work up your your four corners and then as we're smoothing
it out again smooth around your bottom and then smooth up from the bottom to
to the top okay right so. Well we'll get some footage of that so we
don't see that here to you as well so now you want to work somewhat quickly.
You don't have to rush it but I mean this stuff does start to cure quick
enough right and if if you're too slow on the job it's gonna start to skin over
and then when you're trying to make that nice clean line afterwards.. Its going to be
very hard .it's gonna get hard okay yeah so we have calking gun now and I guess
we could show you guys the silicone that we used. Yeah and this is
very actually important. two main brands that we have at least available to us
here would be home builder and G E on the package itself it does say save for
aquariums. they also have another one to just your general GE silicone
one and it's not your kitchen and bath one that you would use. Its your windows
and doors. yeah. Yeah and different zones (countries) vary from brand to brand
but if you're gonna be using these you want to make sure it's a hundred percent
silicon and it doesn't have any of the mold inhibitors or anything like that. So
just silicone the mold inhibitors will leach in yeah kill stuff in your tanks,
it's not a good idea. So just 100 cent silicone and you're good to go
don't worry if the tube doesn't say safe for aquariums that's just a liability
you think it's not necessarily what the company who produced it designed it for
you know so they may put a warning like this is not for aquarium use but that's
just to cover so legally. You can always go get a
tube usually from your LFS and it's gonna cost about 35 bucks
for aquarium a specific. This company here is really nice and they put
for aquariums on it so it's essentially the exact same thing 100 silicone yeah
so again it gets a little bit tricky sometimes you get a straight bead when
you do have these cross beams but you just work around it
so it takes about 20 minutes for the silicone to start to tack up a little
bit and build a little skin like a surface I'm so you should have time to
do the whole perimeter and all the seams of your tank before you have to go and
spread it you should be able to do it in that amount of time
so one thing we forgot to mention this stuff is fairly noxious it has a really
really strong vinegar smell. Make sure you're doing this in a well-ventilated
area or at least like in this case Mike set up a fan so it's like blowing
the fumes away from my face as I'm working. Because when you're over top
yeah you feel it like it. gets you will cough a little bit. A respirator you could
use if you've got some sort of breathing issues or a prone to asthma or anything
like that. Just to make sure you're not gonna exacerbate your your already
existing situation but for people who don't have that still really well
ventilate because yeah you'll get the headache and stuff like that if you're
in a small space. yeah we have a fan blowing on us and we have a fan above us
- and the door is open so yeah we're we're trying our best to keep that smell
down. so the next step that we're gonna do here is we've applied the silicone
now and we're just going to remove the tape right. Yep that's it so try to be as
careful as you can when you're doing this again just because there's gonna be
some silicone and that's overlapped and everything like that. I mean it's
bound to happen at least once that you're gonna go and you're gonna
submerge it somewhere on the glass or on the bottom I'm like yeah unless you're
very careful like it and again don't stress it don't try and wipe it off
right away cos you're just gonna make a thin thin layer that's gonna be super
hard to get off yeah just leave it leave your mistakes let it dry and let it cure
and then you can just go at it with the razor yeah razor and then maybe even
acetone if the exact snow yeah it's much easier to do it that way yeah
all right so this is pretty much it now we've got the silicone on and it looks
really good there's no bubbles in the silicone the start so we've already
improved on what we were coming from and yet we peeled off the tape like I said
as fast as we could kind of thing is you don't rush it but you want to get it
done just because it can start to skin over and I could just make a mess yeah
as I said we had a few little ooops here as we were peeling the tape because the end of the
tape would have some silicone here and there but like it's their tiny little
things that the razor the acitone is just clear right off no problem if again your
finger dragging or whatever is leaving a little bit of excess on the side that
didn't get taken away and you don't like the look necessarily I mean you'd like
it a little bit cleaner in this case most of it ended up on the bottom layer
so it's your choice don't even or not it's not gonna hurt the seam. It's just going to be
buried under the substrate anyway so if you want to go for that absolute solid
clean look once it's all cured and dried just take that razor blade to it again
and just cut your line and get it nice and clean and nice and professional so
I mean if like in our case like I said it happened below the substrate but if
it happened for you while you're doing your sides where it's visible let it set
take your razor clean it looks beautiful. yeah so what we're gonna do now is wait
24 to 48 hours and then we're going to stress test the tank so we're gonna fill
it up starting really slowly and we'll get that next step on the video yeah the
best way to know for sure if the 24 to 48 you're not sure is do the nose test
and it still really smells that vinegar smell it's not dry it's not dry just
give it a little bit longer to cure but yeah 24 48 should be good if you didn't
glob in in there. so awesome. so now that this is completely done
we've stress test the tank for a good 24 hours and what we've also done is
drained and emptied it a few times now we've got to remember that we use the
acetone in the tank and this stuff here is really toxic so we do want to make
sure we get this all over the tank but other than that this tank turned out
awesome silicon job turned out pretty good
there's a couple spots that if I wanted to I could kind of fix it up just by
taking a razor blade and kind of facing up the seats but since most of it is
really down below where my substrate is going to be it's not really important
and I think it looks pretty good so I'm definitely really happy with how this
turned out and now we can get my fish back in the tank so thank you guys very
much for watching I hope this helps somebody else and you guys have yourself
a great day
you