Today, I will tell you whether it is better to choose ultra-white glass fish tank or acrylic fish tank when customizing office fish tanks?
At present, the finished fish tanks below 3 meters long and desktop fish tanks in the living room are mostly ultra-white glass. Large fish tanks above 3 meters and 5 meters are all made of acrylic.
There are many types of fish tanks on the market, and the prices vary greatly. Its price is mainly reflected in the material and production process. Let’s understand the advantages and disadvantages of acrylic fish tanks and glass fish tanks from eight aspects. What are the advantages of acrylic fish tanks?
Acrylic fish tanks are lightweight, with a specific gravity ratio of 1200kg per cubic meter and 2500kg for glass. Acrylic fish tanks are lighter.
2. Pressure bearing capacity
Due to the influence of the process, the thickest glass thickness is 19mm+19mm laminated glass. According to the aquarium engineering industry standard, it is limited to fish tanks below 1.5 meters deep (basically acrylic is used for fish tanks above 1.5 meters).
Many hobbies may say that the glass can be tempered to increase its strength. In fact, tempering also increases the glass explosion index (there is a possibility of self-explosion), and once the tank explodes, glass shards will splash everywhere, which is conceivable.
However, the domestic acrylic fish tank can be made into a 150mm thick integrated board, and the pressure resistance of acrylic itself is stronger than that of glass (the aquarium engineering industry says that it is 16 times the pressure resistance of glass), because it has a certain degree of softness. Even the composite board can be made up to 500mm thick (similar to laminated board in simple terms, but the process is completely different)
3. Transparency
At present, most of the finished fish tank-level desktop fish tanks in the living room are made of ultra-white glass. Large 3-meter and 5-meter fish tanks are made of acrylic materials, but there are many inferior acrylic products (acrylic recycled materials) on the market. Moreover, different manufacturers have different processes for producing acrylic board materials (production process, grinding and polishing, etc.), and transparency cannot be generalized.
4. Plasticity
In fact, in terms of shape, the glass hot bending process is subject to many restrictions, such as the size of the glass plate (normally 6 meters * 3 meters), the hot bending furnace is too small (different sizes of different processors), and many other reasons are not as good as acrylic fish tanks.
Acrylic fish tank plates, our factory can customize to 3 meters * 9 meters large plates, and hot bending is even more of a piece, because it has a certain softness, and hot bending is much more convenient than glass. It can be said that more complex water tanks are basically acrylic.
5. Thermal insulation performance
This is mainly reflected in tropical fish tanks. Due to the thickness and density of the material, the thermal insulation performance of glass aquariums is not inferior to that of acrylic aquariums.
6. Hardness
“Glass is afraid of being smashed, and acrylic is afraid of being scratched.” In fact, from this point of view, it can be said that acrylic aquariums are not as good as glass. This is mainly reflected in the maintenance of the aquarium in the later stage. When cleaning the inner and outer walls of the aquarium, acrylic aquariums are prone to scratches, so acrylic aquariums are best cleaned and maintained by professional teams.
But acrylic also has its own advantages in this regard, that is, once there are scratches, there is no need to be afraid, because of its own thickness,
we can completely restore it to its original state after grinding and polishing.
But glass is not like that. Once the glass is scratched, there is no way to restore it to its original state.
7. Splicing process
Glass fish tanks are normally formed by bonding with glass glue. Even if the bonding master is good, the splicing is obvious. In the later stage of fish farming, the glass glue at the bonding is easy to breed green algae and turn black. Acrylic uses seamless splicing. To put it more clearly, it uses acrylic raw materials to splice the plates. If you don’t look carefully after splicing, you don’t know where the splicing seam is. The surface of the splicing is smooth, and its strength is as unbreakable as if it were one-piece molding.
8. Price issues
Due to various reasons for acrylic fish tanks, the price of acrylic fish tanks is naturally many times higher than that of glass fish tanks (acrylic fish tanks are calculated by kg, and glass is calculated by square). If you want to know more about the price of acrylic fish tanks, please consult UC Acrylic Factory.
Summary:
Glass fish tanks are very wear-resistant, and generally speaking, no scratches will appear when cleaning, but it also has a variety of disadvantages.
Of course, there are many low-quality acrylic fish tanks on the market. This kind of fish tank is very good when it is new, light, not easy to leak, and cheap. The surface of low-quality acrylic fish tanks is generally not smooth enough, and the dirt is not easy to clean. If you wipe it with something harder, it is easy to scratch. Because of its low price, many people still buy it.
How about acrylic fish tanks? What are the advantages?
Whether the fish tank is for home or commercial use, the choice of materials is very important. People generally choose transparent materials such as glass and acrylic, among which acrylic is very popular.
The outstanding advantage of acrylic over other transparent materials is that its light transmittance is very high, above 93%, which means that acrylic fish tanks have higher clarity; and it is not as easy to reflect light as glass and tempered glass, and the visual effect is better.
Secondly, the density of acrylic material is relatively low, only about 1.2g/cm3, so whether it is processing and production, or shipping and transportation, it can save a lot of manpower and material resources;
In addition, today’s fish tanks are gradually not satisfied with the same shape. Various special-shaped tanks such as egg tanks and lotus tanks are emerging in an endless stream, attracting people’s attention. For commercial aquariums and fish tank stores, if they do not launch new products in time, they will be eliminated by the market.
Therefore, processing performance is also a must for fish tank manufacturing materials. Acrylic has a relatively high degree of freedom in this regard. It can be bent, cut and drilled, and can also be hot-bent and blister-formed; it can be processed only with tools such as utility knives, or it can be placed on large equipment for more sophisticated processing.
In addition, there is no need to worry about whether acrylic fish tanks are more likely to break. Acrylic is much stronger than tempered glass in material strength, and there are no weak points on the four corners of the plate, so it will not be damaged during normal use.