Acrylic aquariums

oceanlover89 · Apr 19, 2014

I was thinking about buffing out some scratches in my acrylic aquarium. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to do it. Also I have a lot of coral and live rock and fish inside of it what what I do as I'm buffing out my tank. Any help would be appreciated thank you

Reefing Madness · Apr 20, 2014

You can only buff the outside of the tank, and the fish will be freaked out while your doing it, they'll just run and hide.
Novus Acrylic Polish, and or wet sand paper for the really bad scratches.
HOW TO: Acrylic tank polishing and scratch removal - YouTube
Sanding and polishing a acrylic fish tank (Removing fine scratches or tape) - YouTube

oceanlover89 · Apr 20, 2014

The outside isn't really the problem. The most scratches I have are on the inside of the Aquarium I need to buff them out. Is there a way to make this happen?

booth2010 · Apr 20, 2014

Probably not without emptying the tank

PatW · Apr 20, 2014

booth2010 said:
Probably not without emptying the tank

You have to empty, clean and dry the tank. Than you buff out the scratches with increasingly finer sand papers finally finishing up with a polish. It isn't hard to get good results. But emptying the tank and housing your menagerie is a major pain.

Rjramos · Apr 20, 2014

You definitely have to empty,clean and dry as best you can. I saw the video above and it looks like they are working the entire surface. I would imagine you don't have scratches all over, but deep scratches here and there. Google, Dico buffering products. They have different composite tubes to use with metals and plastics along with buffering wheels. Their blue tube is for acrylic plastics. I used their product on an aquarium a long time ago with great results. Do not use fine sandpapers as mentioned above and then buffering. You will ruin the tank! Good luck! My best advice and one I learned a long time ago is, with reef tanks go with glass, less tendency to scratch especially when trying to remove crusty coralline algae.

ethridge78 · Apr 20, 2014

you will have to drain it sorry.

oceanlover89 · Apr 23, 2014

Thanks every one for the help. I might just deal with the scratches for ever instead of having to take everything out. It's been up and running for 6 years and I don't want to mess things up!

PatW · Apr 23, 2014

I have an acrylic dome, used in underwater photography. It gets scratched. I got the materials by googling it. Apparently the windscreens on small planes are acrylic. I got a scratch removal kit with instructions from a company that supply's thesis for that purpose. It worked and should work on your aquarium.

oceanlover89 · Apr 24, 2014

Wow that sounds like it might work. Do you remember the name?

TJ's Reef · Apr 24, 2014

You can sand out most any scratches to nearly a polish on the inside while wet using fine automotive finish sandpapers. Cut to size and place underneath your magnetic algae cleaner starting with 600-800 grit or a bit courser for bad scratches and sand out scratches at opposing angle then proceed to 12-1500 --> 2000 --> 4000 --> 6000 and finish off with 8000 or higher. You cannot easily buy these super fine grits off the retail shelf but most automotive paint shops will sell you single or half sheets if asked nicely.

Cheers, Todd