Periodically Inspect Your Aquarium Seams?

[maxtek]

That recent forum post about wave-makers got me thinking (maybe because I have a Tunze Wavemaker generating about a 1/2 inch worth of oscillation). There are tons of stories about failed seams — this appears to be the main cause of catastrophic failure. The corner seams on my ELOS are 3/4 inch by 1/4 inch. Inspecting them closely, I can see one spot high up that I scraped about ~1/8th of an inch during cleaning at some point. The seams appear to be in good shape otherwise — but what do degraded seams look like? This tank is young, but I’d like to establish a baseline now so that I can monitor periodically for any changes. Are there visual indicators that the seams are degrading? What do you look for? Does anyone have a visual record of a seam that later failed?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Yeah, they either start a very tiny drip of a leak or they fail catastrophically!