scratched glass tips?

[DonkeyFish]

OK. There's plenty of smart DIY out-of-the-box people on here...anybody have tips on repairing scratches on glass? Of course to make things challenging, on the inside. I have the fancy 8 million part sanding procedure in a box for acrylic...but haven't ever had this issue with glass. Anybody have any tips/tricks???

[jweis]

I don't know, but I have the same problem, so I'd be interested in any suggestions.

[JLW]

Not much you can do, frankly.

[neturalist]

same 8 million part sanding procedure applies to glass. I would just get new glass since the result is usually not worth the effort.

[JLW]

In my experience, you scratch the glass up pretty badly trying ... There's a procedure using some very harsh, powerful acids that works wonders.

Of course, assuming you don't kill yourself doing it, it'll cost you a few grand. . . .

Turn the tank around?

[jweis]

I just found this online. Too much effort for me, but maybe Jen or someone else would be willing:

I successfully removed all the scratches. I would recommend the system I used to anyone.
While researching, everything said to use cerium oxide polish. It also said that if the scratches are deep enough to feel with your fingernail, they're probably beyond repair. This is NOT TRUE. Using the method below - I removed a few scratches that were definitely deep enough to feel. The key was to polish the glass with diamond powder, not cerium oxide. The cerium oxide is more of a glass polish than a scratch remover. It's not course enough to actually grind down the glass around the scratches. The diamond powder is.
Here's what I did...
I ordered the Pocket polisher kit from http://www.pocketpoisher.net. It was $28 and came with the cerium oxide. Everything worked well except the cerium oxide was too fine to do much. I polished over the scratch for more than 2 hours with very little improvement.
I then went to amazon.com and ordered 3000 grit diamond powder. I got 5 Ct. for about $10. This is a VERY SMALL AMOUNT of diamond grit, but it goes really far.
Using the diamond grit with water to make a paste, I was able to buff out the scratches completely in about 20 minutes. Although the scratches were gone, there was a white haze where I buffed because the glass was very finely scratched by the diamond powder.
I then used the cerium oxide/water paste from the pocket polisher kit to buff these ultra-fine scratches from the repair sites. -- This only took about 15 more minutes.
The tank looks awesome now.

To recap, here's what you need:
One pocket polisher kit from pocketpolisher.net and a power drill.
5Ct. of 3000 grit diamond powder.
Using the pads from the pocket polisher kit and a little bit of diamond powder/water mixture, buff the scratches out.
Go over the repair sites with the cerium oxide/water mixture to buff the glass.
You're done in less than an hour for less than $40!

[DonkeyFish]

So it's not that the tank is too expensive to throw away by any stretch, it's just that I don't want to tear up my 'scape just yet! LOL. Good research Julie, I'll look into it. Thanks!

[SCMurphy]

I tried to get the scratches out of a 75, worked my tail off trying. Just get a new tank.