Polishing you glass

Are you trying to remove fine scratches? You are SOL, unfortunately... better to just get new tank if they bother you. The trade off with glass versus acrylic is that even though glass is much harder to scratch, you can't do anything about it once it's scratched, really. With acrylic you can polish it out.

If you are trying to make scratchless glass even smoother.... You really can't if it's already smooth. You aren't going to be viewing the tank through an electron microscope display....

If you are trying to "polish" out mineral stains, then there's no need: use a citric acid solution.

If you are wanting to clean your glass with an abrasive powder to remove dirt/oil buildup/mineral deposits/whatever, much like is done with stainless steel appliances, then just wipe it with rubbing alcohol.


Don't use anything abrasive on glass... I am not really sure why you want to use a polishing compound if you just want to clean it....

I've read that scratches that are deep can't be polished out, but if they are light/shallow enough you can polish with Cerium Oxide.

abomans said:

I've read that scratches that are deep can't be polished out, but if they are light/shallow enough you can polish with Cerium Oxide.

Click to expand...

This is true

You'll need to have the tank empty and clean. Then you'll need a glass polishing kit similar to this (offsite) - https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Polishing-Types-Windshield-Scratches/dp/B001RAQGXC As you can see, you use a drill. You must work slowly and carefully, especially if the tank is nade of tempered glass.

Yea, you can buff out very fine scratches, but as you'll find out, it's a tremendous amount of work.

How big a tank are we talking about?

Unless it's a large tank, about 70 gal or larger, your usually better off replacing the tank.

It'a a 55 gallon tank. Glass is 1.5 cm thick.