I picked up a 90g that had a cracked back pane off a curb. The other 3 sides and the bottom appear to be fine, and given the way the back panel broke, it is obvious the sides are not tempered so I have plans to use the front and side panes in DIY glass rimless aquariums.

So that leaves me with the tempered glass bottom. 48" x 18" sheet 1/2" thick.

What to do with it. It's had gravel scraped all over it so it might have scratches, dunno if tempered glass can have scratches buffed out with the various methods of removing glass scratches.

But what to do with such a sheet that can't be cut?

Some things I could use it for:

• Plywood aquarium - Use it for the viewing pane. Doesn't need to have great viewing properties as I'd be leaving it outdoors as an above ground pond with a viewing pane.
• Tabletopper, or shelf?
• Long, low, wide tank 48x18x12

I would go in this order:
Bottom for another tank if I felt it worth the time to do one.
I would not want to spend the time to use it for viewing if it has scratches as glass is cheap.
It might be easy to send away with bulk pickup!

if you weren't using the other panes of glass I would say cut down all the panes in half (10.5" tall) and use the top half of the front pane in the back and now you have a really interesting tank to use?
Basically turn the 90g into a 45g frag tank, 10.5" is really short though.

I had also thought of this, but I’m not into saltwater aquariums... yet, just fw planted. It’d be a very strange tank. Seems great as a plant nursery tank, but kinda short for all those background plants.

Tho, I believe the way rimmed tanks are manufactured I’d have to find some way to cut the side pieces 1” because changing the arrangement of the panes to put them on top of the bottom will require shortening side panes by 1” which doesn’t seem so easy to do 1/2” glass and household tools.

Starting to think I should turn it into a patio table of sorts just to keep it around till I move. Next home must have a yard big enough for a greenhouse, will then use it as a shelf in the greenhouse.

Yeah it would be weird, one of these days I want to make a tank like that but essentially make the entire thing a giant carpet, maybe make it half terrestrial with rock and woodwork coming up about 12 inches above the glass height, doing some orchids or something. But alas, there are always those one day..... Projects.
Haha

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I just discovered "running pliers" which can help to split pieces as small as 1". So the weird low, wide and long tank is a possibility. Even better, I may be able to salvage half of the pane that cracked, essentially letting me get a small tank out of the good panes that get split to half height. Gonna order the pliers after I take apart the tank to verify the panes are attached the way I assumed.

You'd be surprised how good short tanks are. I've got 12 22 breeders that are 10" (Almost the footprint of a 40B but 10" tall.)

I was growing a buch of emersed plants in them. Great for cory breeding and many others like certain tetras

yeah if you read through all the posts I later posted that I would one day like a short tank like that, 10" is useful for a lot of different things though if you use substrate I imagine that it gets pretty short, which you could do some really cool perspective stuff with.