I certainly hope that no one EVER has this problem, but the 120 I bought used 7 years ago sprung a leak along the back seam. I tore the tank down. When I took the Durso standpipe out of the overflow while draining the tank and the overflow drained, the leak stopped. So I assumed that is where the leak was, took the overflow off, took out the silicone behind and about three inches on both sides of the overflow and re-sealed it. Filled it up and it leaked. Tore it back down and re-sealed the entire back seam. Worked great for about three hours, then drip . . drip . . drip. Sooo, I was complaining while at Preuss and they shared an idea with me to basically re-make the bottom seal of the tank with a new piece of glass. So here is what I did.
I cleaned the whole tank and took the silicone down to a horizontal level to the silicone between the glass:
Then I got a piece of 3/8 inch glass cut from an old table top 47" long by 6" wide for the 120 which is 48 inches long. I thought that would leave enough room but wound up breaking that piece as it was just too tight. Then I got a 46 inch piece cut and had to have a 3 1/2 inch hole cut in it for the bulkhead to make it flush and seal well to the bottom of the tank. Put it into place after putting silicone under it and sealed it up:
Here's the left side:
Then I reinstalled the overflow and added a vertical piece of glass out of the hunk I broke on the right hand side of the back where the leak seemed to be coming from just to give it a little extra seal:
So here is a photo of the entire seam along the back on the right side of the tank where it seemed to be the leak I absolutely couldn't fix.
As you can see, you are basically creating a new bottom to fix a leak in the seam between the glass. Many thanks to the folks at Preuss for the idea. It's back up and running with nary a drip for five days now, but I wouldn't want to do it again!
Everything is progressing well trying to get everything back in shape. Brandon, my living room looked like the back room at a fish store for about three weeks. Had a huge rubbermaid tub filled with the live rock, put all the good corals in my frag tank which was still running and the sump was working. Set up my sister frag tank I use at swaps and also used a 40 gallon rubbermaid tub for some of the larger rocks with animals on them. Lights, heaters, powerheads, lots of water changes. All my fish were in the frag tank so they were happy to get back to the 120. I lost a few things but most everything made it!
Everything is progressing well trying to get everything back in shape. Brandon, my living room looked like the back room at a fish store for about three weeks. Had a huge rubbermaid tub filled with the live rock, put all the good corals in my frag tank which was still running and the sump was working. Set up my sister frag tank I use at swaps and also used a 40 gallon rubbermaid tub for some of the larger rocks with animals on them. Lights, heaters, powerheads, lots of water changes. All my fish were in the frag tank so they were happy to get back to the 120. I lost a few things but most everything made it!
Sounds like you had good planning as usual, glad it went as well as it did John.
Glad to see the updates John. We've done this repair style on dozens of aquariums - primarily sales tanks that would be very difficult or expensive to replace and we have yet to have one fail. Glad to hear you were able to replicate the technique at home.