buffing acrylic

A buddy of mine has an acrylic tank he's trying to get me to buy. It's got a bunch of scratches though. How easy/hard is it to buff acrylic? What do you need? How long would it take? Etc. 

The only way to fix is either replace or buff, If the scratches are to deep they might not come out or distort the plastic,

Do they make any kind of buffing product that is safe to use with your fish and corals still in the tank?

Edited by BobC63 - December 03 2009 at 10:48pm

Yes, the only problem is to truly make it look new it needs to be sanded and high speed polished , I would be more then happy to look at it and tell you how much it would cost, We have done plenty of these.

A few years ago...
I was Stupid!  I was using magnets to do quick algae cleaning on my acrylic tank (150g).  So, naturally, the one on the inside picked up a piece of crushed coral.  With the "streaking" on the outside, it was hard to see the scratching going on, on the inside...I did a right fine job of messing up my tank...As a side note, it is much harder to clean algae and stuff out of scratched acrylic, then nice smooth acrylic.

Finally, I got a small acrylic sanding/polishing kit.  I didn't use the polish on the inside, but I DID sand it down...with all my fish still in it.  It was work, but it turned out great.  Keep in mind, It was a FOWLER tank, not a reef tank.  I had no problem with any of my livestock.

Well, other than having to chase them away from my hand, as they were AGGRESSIVE fish.  Eels, groupers, puffers, damsels, etc.


Edited by Summertop - December 04 2009 at 10:12am

BobC63 wrote: Do they make any kind of buffing product that is safe to use with your fish and corals still in the tank?   I have some milder scratches on my 225 that I would love to get rid of - but don't want to have to remove all the livestock and then drain the tank to do it

ya, mr. clean magic erasers will remove minor scratches and it is reef safe. under water with coral and fish, no problem.

From experience the fastest way to do it especially when the tank isn't set up and you want to do more then a couple little scratches is to sand the entire tank surface with an electric sander using 400 grit sandpaper, then 600 grit.  This will remove the scratches unless they are really deep in which case you would use 200 grit then 400 grit, then 600 grit.  I usually stop at 400 grit.  Then I use a high speed buffer about $40 from harbor freight, a good foam buffing pad from Superior Auto Paint, and a bottle of 3M Perfect-It Machine Glaze purchased at an auto body shop.  This buffs it like new in literally minutes. 

Edited by rdbrown - December 04 2009 at 8:07pm

If you look at the label on the polish rdbrown posted, it is from the same 3M Trizact line.