Hi, my friend recently got a 187g glass tank which when we viewed it we thought it was a beauty. Couldn't see any scratches so we thought it was a great deal. Got it to his house and filled it with water and it still looked ok but then we put the lights on and oh ooooo, it was not that beautiful after all. There are lots of fine surface scratches all over the tank.

I'm not worried about trying to buff the scratches out and I'm sure they will come out cause its impossible to feel them so they are super fine.

What concerns me is the tint on the glass and leads me to my question.

If I get the Cerium oxide (jeweler's paste) and buff them out will I buff out the tint with it?

Is the tint in the glass or on the glass? I'm pretty worried if we buff the tint will go too?

Does anyone have experience with this? I've read lots on it and many have good results however no one says if it was tinted or not.

Thanks

The bluish green color is the glass. As for scratches, I bought a 240 gallon tank from glasscages.com about two years ago with the starfire glass. It is really clear and has not yellowed. The first day I set it up I used a soft scrub pad to take the glue off the front and it scratched it! I was shocked, and thank goodness it was only a small area, but I am very interested in any asnwers that may take them out.

Thanks, that confirms what the aquarium people in the city say, I should be good to buff.

We're doing it on Friday so I'll let you know how it goes, I'll try and get before and after pictures if I don't forget.

What does the tint look like? Are you talking about the blueish-green color? I agree it is probably just the color of the glass. All glass has a slight color but it's usually too thin to see. For such a large tank the glass has to be much thicker than normal so any color shows much more. It's always a good policy to try out anything new on one of the least noticeable corners first in case it goes wrong.

I will be looking for your post on how the buffing works out. If you can, please take some before, after, and maybe during, pictures.

On a 240 1/2" is the minimum. Mine is 5/8". I paid the extra for the starfire because I had an older 110 gallon with 1/2" glass that was bluish-grees and I wanted it to be really clear. It shows in the thinner glass, but not as much.

Take your time with the buffing, to fast and your not going to get it done. I spent a week buffing mine out.

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I'd be interested too. I have a tank that I'd like to buff some scratches on.

Fine scratches is the only thing its going to take out. Its tedious work. If you have deep scratches, you have to go the sanding route. And that takes forever.
GLASS POLISHING

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Yeah its a blueish green color and now I'm not worried about taking it off. The glass on this tank is 1/2" the minimum is 3/8" so lots of extra glass available to grind. I get some pics when polishing.

Reefing Madness you said not to fast or it won't get done, what do you mean by that? Do you mean don't spin the disc to fast? What did you use to polish your tank was it cerium oxide? What material was you pad and what tool did you use?

I used a oxizidation removing polish. Once you get started you'll know what I'm talking about. Its just not going polish up as fast as you think it will. Unles your going to grind (hard sand) it off, in which case you'll be doing it in sections, and at different degrees of sanding. I was using a 2 stage polisher on high speed, for a week.

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I'm sure just the polishing will clean it up and yeah I'm not scared of work, I like a challenge.

Did you do the whole tank, how bad was it and did it turn out brand new looking?

I had some really bad ones that I didn't care to spend a month sanding out. The hairline scratches came out just fine. Brand new, no, it still left behind some oxidization that I just couldn't get out for some reason. I did the whole 240g tank, inside and out.

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I wonder why it left oxidization, maybe cerium oxide won't do that. I checked out your pics of the tank and can't tell so it must not be that bad?

What look do you like better, scratches or oxidization?

Scratches. I can see the oxi on the glass from the side when the sun hits the tank in the morning, other than that, no one would notice, I know its there. The scratches aren't a big thing to me, they grow coralline algae in them, thats the only thing drives me nuts.

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Well didn't get a chance to polish today, won't happen till next weekend now, I'll update then.

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This is the extreme scratch removal:

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That's pretty good, here's one I found the other day.

The learning process is now over and I'm ready to do some serious damage on the tank tomorrow.

Yesterday me and my friend started the task, we decided to do a complete buff on the front glass inside and out, that would give it a good clean so we could see all the scratches. If your glass is all stained with that corrosive look I don't think there's anything better than this method to clean it up, sure beats using vinegar.

First we cleaned the glass with pure bleach to make sure nothing was on it to scratch the glass, then we spent about 2 hours buffing the front glass, inside and out. Once it was buffed we found more scratches then we wanted to and sad thing is a few we can feel so this won't work for them.

After cleaning we decide we would now give a scratch a serious go, there was a long scratch on the outside of the tank about 8-10in long. It was more than hairline, you could see it easily when the lights were turned on. 5 hours later 100% gone!

During the process my friend had his doubts but I always knew it would disappear and surely it did. The time it took isn't valid though because we were learning during that 5hour process. The first couple hours we did nothing or basically nothing, because we always had the glass to wet but as we got into it we noticed we could feel something between the glass and the disc when the cerium oxide was more like a paste consistency. When it was like that on the glass it was actually grinding away but when it was wet wet no grinding was really happening. I would like to believe the scratch we got out would have taken 2 hours max if we started the with the technique we ended with.

Tomorrow I'll have a more valid time frame because now I know what I'm doing. We did get some pics I just don't have them with me at home, I'll get them tomorrow and post a bunch. There's no oxidation either, it cleaned up nicely.

Here's a list of what we used.

1. bleach to clean the glass
2. cerium oxide to polish the glass
3. 5" foam bonnet for polishing
4. 5" plastic disc for drill
5. variable speed drill
6. spray bottle to add water to glass

The foam bonnet isn't ideal because you can't get the rpms very high on the drill because you get to much spray. We were maybe spinning at 500 RPM's at the fastest times. Nice thing about that is much less chance to build heat and break the glass, at no point could we generate any heat, we tried. When I was getting supplies I was told that foam wasn't great because of spray and was told the best is a "felt bob" apparently the felt holds the liquid better and doesn't cause a spray so you can spin fast however that's when you will build heat so I'm sure one has to be more careful with felt. We were going to get a felt bob but it was $40 so we got the foam instead for $10.

In my opinion its definitely worth doing, I've done a lot of things and I rate this as being "easy" you just need patience.

I'll post some pics tomorrow, hopefully I have some nice after shots too.

Robsworld78, you rock. THANKS. I am going to try this on my starfire as soon as I can get the supplies and after I see your pics.