After moving this past weekend, noticed a VERY slow leak in the bottom corner of my 20 gallon fresh fish tank. I've got the fish in a safe place and all of the rocks, etc. out...got some silicone meant for tank repair. My question is: how much silicone do I need to actually remove? The water leak manifests as very small beads at one of the outer corners of the tank...so I'm assuming the offending area on the inside should be near that same corner (obviously). Every youtube how-to vid I've found only shows how to replace entire seams. Is this necessary? Can I simply cut a portion and then reseal that particular area? Will the new silicone seam bond to the old? Meaning can I just cut that corner out and reseal? ...or should I just buy a new damn $30 tank and save the trouble? Any help will be appreciated. If I can save a few bucks and fix this myself, I'd rather do that.
new tank.....no question about it.....im sure if the thing bursts, itll ruin more than 30$ worth of stuff (including ur fish)
Yeah, probably a good time to go ahead and just upgrade to a 55gal or so. I'm not rebuilding a 20gal...I'll just give it to someone with lizards or snakes or something I guess.
agreed on the upgrading to a larger size, but if you must repair your existing one...do the entire seam. Its jsut the best way to do it...if you are leaking from a certain area, you probably will spring a leak from the same seam. For real, you are gonna have to remove some fo the seam anyway, you might as well go ahead and do the rest of that seam.
Get a replacement tank. Check out Craigslist- you can get them that size for free or dirt cheap. I'd go for a larger tank.
The repair can be done, but on a 20g, buying a new one is wiser, especially if you have never done this before. As an aside... I had a 300g tank for 10+ years and finally back in May, the shoddy work that the shop did in fixing up the silicone seams gave way and I had at least 75 gallons of water leak out into our living room. I saved most of the fish. Insurance covered it, but the incovenience of the repairs/restoration during our new child's birth was horrible. I ended up giving it away for free on Craigslist along with a really really nice stand that I had built (probably worth more than the aquarium). I think they were going to turn it into a reptile tank. Suffice it to say, I am not allowed to have anything that big in our living room again.
