Bad aquarium idea gone bad

[Zippy2]

My wife bought a couple of big glass jars at a garage sale this summer. We turned one into a coin bank which I jokingly call my Grandson’s college fund. The other one is 6 about gallons and hexagonal shaped with a small, maybe 5” mouth. Three weeks ago it suddenly came over me that I should turn it into an aquarium.

My plan was to make it a self sustaining bio unit. So I bored a ½” hole in the side, a couple inches up from the bottom. I installed a stainless bulkhead tube fitting, some stainless fender washers and sealed the threads with RTV. I then bought some gravel, an air pump, check valve and a diffuser. I filled the jug with water and let it sit for a week checking for leaks. It worked fine and looked good with the air coming from under the gravel. Very unusual looking for an aquarium.

Then, I thought, why not add LED’s? Maybe blue ones at the bottom, shining upwards. So I decided to drill another hole for the wiring. I took it to the utility sink and dumped the water. But in doing so I bumped the jug into the faucet and poked a hole near the neck. Just a light tap too. Turns out that the glass is very thin in that area. I have wineglasses that aren’t much thicker. The photos don’t do justice to how thin it actually is.

What prompted me to confess my sin was Rob’s recent post where he mentions tempered glass. Huh oh, you mean they use tempered glass for aquariums?

So once again, crazy gadget guy is defeated because he built something he knew absolutely nothing about.

But did I mention there were two jars? The other is only about 4 gallons but it’s a squashed sphere in shape with a flat bottom and the same opening. It looks thicker too. But Vickie saw me looking at it and now I can’t find it.

I tried to send this last night but my laptop died because the external power jack on the back broke away from the motherboard. So I took it apart. Amazing what you have to remove to get to it. It looks like I can solder it back on though. Wish I had read the manual before I took it apart.
Charlie