Choosing Your Tank: Glass Vs. Acrylic (Part 1)

One of the first choices that you’re going to have to make when entering the hobby is your going to be one that most people don’t usually think about. That choice is what type of aquarium am I going to use to house my fish. In general there are two types of aquarium available. Generally speaking aquariums are made of glass and acrylic. Now when I say generally speaking please understand that their are other materials used as well. Far less common are the polycarbonates. We will confine our discussion to the two most widely available to the hobbyist. These are the glass aquariums and the acylic aquariums. Now which one is best for you, well let us examine the benefits and drawbacks of each.

1.) Acrylic: Acrylic aquariums have two huge advantages over their glass counterparts. The primary advantage is that they are lighter than their glass counterparts. The second advantage of acrylic tanks is that they are less likely to suffer a catastrophic water failure because acrylic tanks do not rely on silicon to join their edges. Instead acrylic tanks have panels that are chemically welded together. Properly assembled acrylic tanks should be thought of as one single piece whereas glass tanks are typically made from five different panels held together by braces (sometimes) and silicon sealant. The primary disadvantage of acrylic is that as a material it is softer then glass. As a result when cleaning the tank its much easier to gouge and deeply scratch acrylic. It is so soft in fact that certain fish such as pufferfish have been known to scratch up the panels simply pushing against the acrylic with their teeth. Thus after a few years of use, may acrylic panels are so gouged up that they become undesirable since the scratches become distratcting as your watching your tank. These scratches can be buffed out but doing so assumes you have the expertise to buff out the scratches and the ability to house your stock in another tank while the original acrylic tank gets buffed out. The second disadvantage that acrylic tanks have is cost. A hobbyist can expect to spend at a minimum twice as much for an acrylic tank as they will for the equivalent glass tank.

2.) Glass: A glass aquarium has two advantages. The primary advantage is that glass tanks are easy to service. They are easier to service because they are much more difficult (though not impossible) to scratch up using normal aquarium tools. Thus many species with large protruding teeth for instance such as pufferfish do not scratch glass tanks as badly as they swim against the glass. The second advantage of glass tanks is that they are half as expensive as acrylic tanks. Thus glass tanks tend to be the choice of most aquarists as they tend to be easier for people to acquire. As a happy accident your money spent on a glass tank goes a lot further if you budgeted the same amount. The amount you spend for instance on a 55 acrylic can be very comparable to the amount you will spend on a 90 gallon glass aquarium. The primary disadvantage of a glass tank is that they are not one piece and you shouldn’t think of them as being one single piece either. Glass aquariums are made up of panels joined together by sealant. Those seals can over time weaken and even break. When this happens, the result can be catastrophic resulting in potentially serious water damage to the home. That being said in 35 years of experience in the hobby, I have yet to experience a single catastrophic failure in a tank. I have to be clear experienced a tank that leaked but never a catastrophic failure to contain water. Tanks that develop leaks can be easily repaired by acquiring silicon sealant that doesn’t have additives to inhibit organisms like funguses like mold and mildew. You can even purchase online the same sealant that manufacturers like Aqueon uses. A secondary disadvantage of the glass tank is that once its scratched you will likely never be able to remove those scratches.