Glass Vs Acrylic. The expert comparison to choose the best. Which aquarium is best for you.

 Most people don't care much while buying a new fish tank.  But people who are truly researching about the aquarium hobby may surely have come across this question: Acrylic tank or a glass tank, which is better?

Now both acrylic, as well as glass, are widely used for fish tanks. Both of these have their respective pros and cons. So if you are confused about this let me help you out.

Here we compare them with respect to their Cost, scratch resistance, weight, clarity, strength,  and shapes/customizability. 

                                                                                                

Cost.

    First things first. Taking into consideration the costs of these tanks, Glass wins. Glass is widely used in various industries and is super popular. So more glass tanks are made, and so they are easily available and this reduces their costs. 

Glass tanks are cheaper.

Scratch resistance. 

     Here Glass wins again. Acrylic scratches very easily, you may even have scratches on your new tank during transportation! For beginners, people with kids at home, or if your tank is frequently touched by people, for all those people glass is always recommended. Even a slight rough contact and you get a scratch. 

The biggest challenge is while cleaning the tank. You get algae on the tank walls and removing it and you get an insane amount of scratches. So acrylic tanks will look older and worn out sooner than glass tanks.

Weight.

    As may you have guessed, acrylic wins. Acrylic is much lighter than glass.  This makes them easy to transport and move. Approximately it's 10 times lighter than glass. 

So for monster tanks, acrylic helps to minimize the efforts of transportation and also helps you maintain even stable water weight. 

Clarity.

And the winner is of course Glass. We have special high-quality clear glass which looks super prestigious. 

Whereas acrylic has less clarity, along with that we have lots of scratches, and then at last as a natural process of aging, acrylic turns yellow or cloudy as time passes. And this is inevitable as well as irreversible!

Strenght. 

Here acrylic is much more impact resistant than glass. And we all have experienced it. Glass is very fragile. So if you have kids at home or there are great chances of people crashing onto the tank go for an acrylic tank or change the location of the tank to a safer place. 

Shapes/customizability.

    Here we would see the potential to make custom tanks. Some people/restaurants need spherical tanks or and other desired shapes. In this case, glass being hard and brittle needs a lot of effort to form into a cylindrical or any other custom shape. Whereas acrylic can be easily molded. So it's easy to make different shapes.

Another problem is when glass is curved, it bends light which makes the fish look bigger/smaller than their actual size, also there are spots where the fish disappears. We can easily observe this in glass fish bowls. Acrylic bends less light, so there is no abrasion of any type. 

Conclusion.

So both of these have their own pros and cons, still, we can conclude this article somewhat like this. 

If you want an unusual-shaped big-sized tank, acrylic will work great. It will be easy to mold, will look good, not fragile, lightweight, and easy to transport. 

Whereas if you wish for a good medium-sized display tank for long run then no one can beat glass. Also, I always prefer having a glass tank due to its great look, long life, and easy care. 

So what choice did you make?, do Comment below.