Scraping Acrylic front... does it leave scratches?

[Jrsydevi1]

I'm about to buy a new tank for set-up in my apartment.. and I'm considering Acrylic this time..

My question is.. When you have to scrape algae off the front.. what do you use? Wouldnt a metal blade leave the acrylic with scrapes? Are there special scrapers used just for acrylic?

 

[jmlesq]

There are scrapers designed for acrylic. Kent makes some They can still scratch though (e.g., a piece of stand gets stuck between the blade and the acrylic). Scratching is always a risk with acrylic and I'll strongly consider that for my next tank but still think I'd get another acrylic tank.

John

 

[texasreefer]

A old credit card works great.

 

[Anonymous]

I have an acrylic 18 gallon cube that I use a Kent Proscraper on. I used to use my ralph's card but the kent actually has a little handle and thicker plastic it's pretty handy. What I've found is to do it once well and keep up on it. If you get the hard green algae and coralline encrusting it you will be working really hard to get it off acrylic. I am super careful and still made a small scratch once or twice when a small grain of sand got blown against the tank wall and scraper. Overall though I really like the acrylic tanks I have but in retrospect a glass tank for a nano would be better - tha small scratched add up a lot slower on a large show tank than on a small one.

My tank - sort of cleaned by a Kent last week for reference.

http://www.maast.org/modules.php?set_al ... _photo.php

There is still some algae near bottom part of glass on sides partly to leave snails something ot graze on and also becuase it's hard to scrape there