Acrylic or glass

J

Jason7181

Member
I was wondering what the advantages/disadvantages or glass and acrylic tanks. I am looking at getting a new tank 240G+ and can't decide if I should go with glass or acrylic.
 
Acrylic is lighter and clearer (even Starphire glass). But it scratches easily. This makes scrubbing coralline algae really tough. Chances are it will look like crap after few months. On the other hand, you won't worry about your tank breaking.
 
I had the same dilemma, what i came up with is; glass can be a lot cheaper and wont scratch easy but its heaver then all hell. Acrylic is more clear/bright, lighter, easier to drill, and light. But the reason i went with glass is because Acrylic scratches too much for my liking and i went with a starfire glass so its very clear and bright. also depends where your putting it, you wouldn't want to drag a 240 glass up a bunch of stairs. my 120 is easy 300 plus pounds.
Hope this helped
 
Acrylic can also discolor with time, so there goes the clearer argument. (with time anyways) Glass is great!
 
Kevin Says said:
Acrylic is lighter and clearer (even Starphire glass). But it scratches easily. This makes scrubbing coralline algae really tough. Chances are it will look like crap after few months. On the other hand, you won't worry about your tank breaking.
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I've never found acrylic hard to clean. An old credit card with a sharp smooth edge, or an old gift card and a scrubby pad for the basic algae. I own both kinds...... And atleast you can buff acrylic if it gets too bad....
 
SunnyBNems said:
I've never found acrylic hard to clean. An old credit card with a sharp smooth edge, or an old gift card and a scrubby pad for the basic algae. I own both kinds...... And atleast you can buff acrylic if it gets too bad....
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tearing down a tank to buff it is a lot of work. especially since he wants a 240 and above.. every acrylic tank i looked at had scratches and i think no matter how careful you are acrylic will always scratch little by little, or if you're really clumsy one little mistake like a grain of sand under your mag scraper will do it right away.
 
i had few acrylic tanks b-4 i looked good at begin & it scratch very easy especially with live rock & sand, i big fan of starphire glass but it also get scratch easy then the regular glass , for 240 gallon glass ( like my new rimless 3/4 inch starphire glass weighted about 700 pounds)
 
I thought long and hard on which to get for my home and I read countless thread on the debate. I eventually decided on glass because it was more scratch resistant than acrylic. My front pane on my tank is Starphire. The tank is rimless and it is heavy as HELL, but I am glad I decided on glass. There are a few scratches on the glass, and I knew it was less likely to scratch than acrylic, but not scratch resistant. I should have been more careful with rockscaping but oh well. With this being my first tank, it's all about learning and experiences.....and when I decide to replace this tank, I will again choose glass.
 
Kevin Says said:
Acrylic is lighter and clearer (even Starphire glass). But it scratches easily. This makes scrubbing coralline algae really tough. Chances are it will look like crap after few months. On the other hand, you won't worry about your tank breaking.
Click to expand...

This is true,i would never buy an acrylic tank. Glass for me.
 
Will this tank be in the wall? If it is, you can do a hybrid Acrylic/Glass AGE tank. Glass front and Acrylic sides, back, and bottom.
 
It depends how much work you want to put into it. I believe that it is possible to keep scratching to a minimum on an acrylic tank if you clean it extremely carefully. This will end up taking a lot of time though. The advantage of glass is you can use a razor blade so it is a lot quicker. I haven't tried cleaning starphire glass with a razor but I am sure it is probably doable.
 
I have a 400 gallon acrylic and if I was to do it over I would get glass in a heart beat the scratches even the small ones started pretty quickly and once you notice them you can't not see them every time you look at the tank
 
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