Top Trim broken,. should I be concerned?

[piznac]

Hey folks,
I was inspecting my 90 (been sitting on the front porch for a year or so) and noticed the trim was broken in a few places.. Thoughts? I thought I would just super glue these back in place but also contemplated replacing the trim. What do you think? It has held water fine in the past and I am about to fill it up again next weekend to test for a few days, but I wanted to address this beforehand if need be. Thanks for any help!

 

[adrian912]

Hey folks,
I was inspecting my 90 (been sitting on the front porch for a year or so) and noticed the trim was broken in a few places.. Thoughts? I thought I would just super glue these back in place but also contemplated replacing the trim. What do you think? It has held water fine in the past and I am about to fill it up again next weekend to test for a few days, but I wanted to address this beforehand if need be. Thanks for any help!

So once the trim has cracked or broken it's no longer serving it's function as well of being there to hold the tank together. Given that the thickness of glass used is calculated based on the strength of the trim to keep the glass from bowing. For how relatively inexpensive and easy it is to replace, I would do so in a heart beat. God forbid you don't and then you end up with 90 gallons on the floor.

 

[jcook54]

***Not an expert***

General consensus on WWW seems to be that the plastic piece at the top holds the glass together at the factory while the silicone dries but doesn't have much of a function structurally beyond that. If it were my tank, I'd super glue it back together as well as possible and use it.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/glstkmoldng.htm

 

[adrian912]

***Not an expert***

General consensus on WWW seems to be that the plastic piece at the top holds the glass together at the factory while the silicone dries but doesn't have much of a function structurally beyond that. If it were my tank, I'd super glue it back together as well as possible and use it.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/glstkmoldng.htm

If that is solely the use of it, then it seems like a very expensive alternative to using an easy peel off tape that can be used to do exactly the same thing. At least that is how I would think (from a business perspective).

 

[bhodges82]

I have a 90 gallon at work that has a glued repair on the trim, it's been running for about three years that way with no issues. The crack is in the corner, it shouldn't cause bowing, i would think that if anything it would cause the silicone seam to be weakened. There are tons of rimless tanks which leads me to beleive that the silicone will be just fine.

#notanexperteither

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[piznac]

Does anyone know where I can find the trim piece?

 

[dball711]

Have you tried the tank manufacturer?

 

[piznac]

Not yet,.. still debating this. After reading all the advice on wetweb, I'm leaning towards just gluing it back up and being done with it. Not sure yet. Thanks for all the replies.

 

[saltwaterwannabe]

I replaced the top trim piece on one of my old tanks because the center brace was broken. There was not enough material at the connection point to fabricate a connecting brace. I actually did it with the tank half drained and fully occupied - all inhabitants survived. It took a couple hours and was worth the investment in my opinion.

Rimless tanks have thicker glass, which not only makes the glass stronger, but provides more area for the silicon to bond. You could lookup the specs for glass thickness of a rimless tank to check, but I would be surprised if the glass is as thick as a similarly sized rimless.

The plastic trim is not to hold water and is there just to support the glass, so you only have to remove enough silicone to put more silicone in the space with the new trim - much easier than resealing a tank. Just search online you are bound to find the right size if it is a standard size tank.

The corners are not as crucial as a top center brace for suoporting the glass as long as the silicon corner bond holds, so I can see how glueing it could be OK, my 2 cents would prefer replacing it. Of course, I have a repaired 210 that many thought would fail, so I am guessing there may be a bit of luck involved.

 

[saltwaterwannabe]

The tank frame I replaced was a 55. I cannot find a 90 online.

Also, I did not look at the pics before, I actually think you would be fine just to glue it as ling as any cross braces are fully in tact. This assimes the frame was damaged and that it did not crack easily.