bursting / exploding fish tanks

[Max Action]

What causes a fish tank to burst? You hear about it from time to time - how common is it? Is it usually older tanks? Too many rocks? Uneven table surfaces?

It sounds catastrophic - to tank, budget, fish, and house ... therefore, I'd like to know a bit about what to avoid, if anyone out there actually knows anything about it.

 

[jeffrey]

well look at how much the tank weights full of water, nevemind the rocks in it.

All it takes is a small fracture caused by anything, sun heating the table its on makes the tank flex a bit, breaks a seal then all the water wants to go out, and well it will, possible catistrophically.


what you need to avoid, anything of real value under hte tank.
the water wont do that much damage if you catch it.


but avoid hitting the tank with a hammer, avoid droping rocks into the tank..... jsut common sence stuff.
when we demo'ed the biuilding where our office is now there was a wall tank about 10' long 8' high 3 feet wide., had to be 40 years old, still full of water, not a leak. we didnt know what to do with it, so golf ball number 1 driver and 30 meters or so, hit low in the tank, only cracked it, second ball looked like it went right through the glass and then all the glass jsut shattered and a wall of stinky water came flooding my way.
Was fun.
dont know why I posted that ???

 

[Rusty_S]

Hey it's a real shame that tank couldn't have been airlifted to my house, I could have had the piranhas I've always wanted then

 

[karrihug]

my 56 gallon column tank was 2 months old, nothing ever touched it, and at 2 am the bottom of the front glass just blew out. perfecto says it must have been defective glass. still waiting for them to pay for the 500 i spent on electrical repair and new carpet. it blew fish all over the house, we found most of them and saved them, but lost a handful of smaller ones we couldn't see.

 

[Dane]

It's always good to check the tank's condition from time to time. Especially if there are small children in the house, or other pets. Anything really can crack the tank, something falling into it could crack the glass. Something you may not see until the pressure finally breaks through and the glass breaks completely..

 

[KnuckleHead]

Ive never had a tank just bust on me count my lucky stars. My son though had a hand in my 170 giving way. For some reason I knew I should have bought him that pellet gun.

 

[jeffrey]

Hey it's a real shame that tank couldn't have been airlifted to my house, I could have had the piranhas I've always wanted then

it was biuilt in and weighed a tonne, everywhere wanted us to pay them to take it from us. even thought it was worth lots, we didnt want it, and the CAT wsa going to be there the next day to detroy everything, and I wanted to have some fun.
it smelled really bad after all the water came out so the cat broke and hauled away the rest of hte pains.


plexi is more likely to jsut give out then glass is, glass with generall show signs that its going to give.

 

[FishDan]

Probably the single biggest reason is a tank not being level on it's stand or wherever it is placed. If the tank is not level one pan of glass is taking an enormous amount of pressure. Eventually the glass will fail and you will have a problem. Generally speaking, if your tank is level and straight it takes some pretty good knocking before it will crack and "explode". Unless the glass is defective or the silicone seals are bad, a tank should never explode unless it is mistreated in some way.

\Dan