Please read above post Of course, acrylic is also easier to repair when it is scratched. Acrylic polishing kits are available in many places, and these can be used to remove scratches on the outside of the tank. These polishes should not be used on the inside of the aquarium, as they may leave a toxic residue that could make the tank uninhabitable.
Weight Glass is denser and therefore heavier than acrylic. A glass tank will often weigh 4-10 times as much as an acrylic tank of the same volume. Acrylic tanks are lighter than glass tanks. This means that if you have to move an acrylic tank for some reason, it will be much easier to do so once the water is all out of it than it will be for its glass counterpart. This also means that an acrylic tank will be less strain on the structure that is supporting it than a glass tank will. However, remember that the majority of the weight of a complete tank is the water and decorations, not the tank itself, so you will not save a lot of weight by using an acrylic tank rather than a glass one.
Breaking and Cracking A sharp impact will crack - or in extreme cases, shatter - a glass tank, or at least one of its sides. This will leave you with a mess, no home for your fish, and possibly some significant damage to the area the tank was occupying. However, this is not an every day occurrence. The force required to break a glass tank is still significant, and is almost always the result of otherwise inappropriate behavior. Though a VERY sharp impact will crack or shatter a piece of acrylic, the amount of force needed for this damage is far greater than it is with a glass tank. On the other hand, almost any impact to an acrylic tank will leave a scratch or mark, even those that would not have marked a glass tank.
Shape Glass is relatively rigid and brittle. Because of this, it is difficult to make fish tanks from glass that are not rectangular in shape. Also, when glass is curved, it has a tendency to bend light, making things on the other side of the curved glass appear larger or smaller than they really are. However, some glass tanks with curved sides are available now. Acrylic is easily molded and formed into almost any shape that can be described - and some that can't. Acrylic also has less of a tendency to distort things that are behind a curve. Because of these two factors, acrylic aquariums are available in a very large number of shapes - not just rectangular.
Support and Rigidity Glass can support considerably more than its own weight over distances. Because of this, glass aquariums can be kept on stands with an open or incomplete top with little or no risk. However, the aquarium stand still needs to be level and the stand still needs to be strong enough to support the weight of the tank.
Also, because of this rigidity, glass tanks require less structural support at the top to keep the tank from flexing or splitting its seams under the weight of the water. Though some bowing of a tank is normal, excessive bowing can lead to split seams or fractured glass. Acrylic tanks require a stand that will support the entire bottom of the tank, or else the bottom of the tank may pul away from the seams under the weight of the water. This is not true in acrylic tanks that have a substantially thicker bottom than would appear necessary.
Also, acrylic tanks require much more support across the top of the tank to keep the acrylic from bowing apart and either splitting seams or spilling water.
Strength The materials required to build a glass tank will be thicker than those required to build an acrylic tank. Though tempered glass does not need to be as thick as non-tempered glass for the same size of tank, the tempered glass will still be thicker than the acrylic necessarily would be for the same tank size. Also tempered glass cannot be drilled to accommodate any filter system designed to use an overflow. Acrylic does not need to be as thick to support the same water volume as glass does, and any acrylic tank can be drilled to accommodate an overflow system.
Refraction of Light Glass has a different index of refraction than water. This means the as light passes through the air, then the glass, then the water to bounce off a fish and get reflected back through the water, then the glass, then the air, the light is bent four times. Each time the light is bent, the image is distorted. Colors are not quite true, position is not quite accurate, size can be distorted slightly.
next post please
I have recently purchased a 29g Nano because I thought I would try a small reef system. I am in the early stages of planning my next venture and would love to get some of your thoughts or opinions. I am looking at something in the 300-400g range that will be set up as FOWLR with a somewhat aggressive stock list. I just wanted to see what the various opinions were on this size aquarium, glass or acrylic?
