My all day every day tank is black, using the replacement black O-rings instead of red. (It’s bad ass!)
I’ve had this tank performing flawlessly for six months until a couple weeks ago it started to leak a little as I filled it. It’s a bottom fill so it was the top O- ring that was leaking, it’s still flawless while in use. I do the whole disassemble cleaning fairly often and noticed the last time that the glass seemed really lose going back on the tank. I figured the O-rings were just wearing out and replaced them, using the original glass and it still seemed really lose. I took the original glass off and put on the replacement glass and it’s snug as a bug. Curious? I tried this original glass on a different tank and yep, it’s lose.
Glass doesn’t shrink or expand. Plastic? Sure. Glass? Nope. It might be that the one that feels loose is a tiny bit shorter and the excess room was taken up by a fresh o-ring(Those DO shrink/lose their resiliency) so maybe that’s what’s going on?
I’ve got a piece of glass for my Billow V2 that does the same thing. It was flush, I disassembled the tank to clean it, and then the glass was loose. I was scratching my head, trying to figure out what the hell was going wrong. Then I discovered that I’d had two thin o-rings doubled up in one of the channels. When I replaced all of the o-rings, the doubled up o-ring came out as one, so I didn’t immediately realize that there had been two. I swapped out the glass and everything was fine.
The one that’s lose had been perfect for six months. It’s lose on old O-rings, on new ones and on the other tank. This other tank is purple with white O-rings. It’s glass is snug, my suspicious glass is lose. It’s not an issue with the O-rings.
Alright @Mizzz_Z_Hobbit and @paingawd here is a little tidbit of info very few people know, I’m not even sure where I leaned it! But glass is not a solid or a liquid. Here is an article that explains it better than I ever could.
I’ve looked around a bit on the web to find an answer to this and I found another answer than you got from @paingawd (sorry bro )
It is a thing but you’ve got your problem wrong, your glass has not expanded, it shrank.
If it had expanded it would be too big for your tank instead of too small.
Apparently cold makes glass shrink and heat makes it expand, that’s why glass breaks when it gets too hot. The outer layer expands quicker than the inner layer causing it to crack.
Has your glass been exposed to cold? I’m just guessing here, thanks for the interesting question though, I love stuff like this.
Glass is not a solid! Have you ever been in an old house with original windows? You know how they are all wavy and thick at the bottom? Yep that’s because it’s moving!
I’ve been in Venice as a kid and went to one of those famous glassblowing places they have.
The glass does go liquid when heated, during the cooling process they manipulate it into the desired form.
It was a fascinating thing to see and I can assure you that at the time I wasn’t on drugs yet.
Stuffing it in the freezer won’t solve it. Your glass has become too small for your tank so it didn’t expand but shrank somehow. Putting it in the freezer will not help.
Try putting it in hot water maybe that’ll make it expand a little. Not so hot that you crack the tank
The article you linked seems to contradict the argument -
Whatever flow glass manages, however, does not explain why some antique windows are thicker at the bottom. Other, even older glasses do not share the same melted look. In fact, ancient Egyptian vessels have none of this sagging, says Robert Brill, an antique glass researcher at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y. Furthermore, cathedral glass should not flow because it is hundreds of degrees below its glass-transition temperature, Ediger adds. A mathematical model shows it would take longer than the universe has existed for room temperature cathedral glass to rearrange itself to appear melted.
Why old European glass is thicker at one end probably depends on how the glass was made. At that time, glassblowers created glass cylinders that were then flattened to make panes of glass. The resulting pieces may never have been uniformly flat and workers installing the windows preferred, for one reason or another, to put the thicker sides of the pane at the bottom. This gives them a melted look, but does not mean glass is a true liquid.
@Mizzz_Z_Hobbit try turning the glass upside down - I can’t recall what tank it was but I had one where there was a very small difference between the top and the bottom - of course this may not work either.
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