I used a rubberband to hold some 4000 size Micro-Mesh sandpaper on to my Algae Free Tiger Shark magnet so that it wouldn't float away when I placed it in the water. Once the outside and inside pieces of the magnet came together, the sandpaper stayed firmly between the magnet and the front of the aquarium. I moved the magnet the way I usually do across the front of the aquarium in order to get rid of algae buildup, and it rubbed out most of my scratches!
I bought some coarser sizes of sandpaper, but I don't think I'll need them except for one or two deeper scratches. If you look closely at some areas, you can see a very slight haze created by the 4000 size sandpaper, but you have to be looking at the front of the glass at an angle in order to notice it. I do have some 6000 size paper too in order to decrease the haze, but I don't really need it. The haze is definitely a lot less noticeable than the scratches. Luckily, I bought two pieces of 4000 and 6000 size since I think I'll be using those two sizes the most. For general cleaning work, I think I'll still be using an acrylic pad with the magnet since the 4000 size paper pressed against the acrylic does rub off enough acrylic to make the water in my 150 cloudy.
So from my short experience with Micro-Mesh sandpapers, if your scratches aren't too deep in your acrylic tank, I think all you would need to buy are 3600, 4000, and 6000 sizes. I don't think I'll need my 1500, 1800, 2400 and 3200 sizes I bought since the 4000 size seems to take out most of my scratches.
Man, I was so happy to see those scratches gone. It was painful to see every new scratch that appeared on my 150-gallon TruVu acrylic tank. Now it will be easy to perform "cosmetic surgery" on any new scratch that appears on the front pane of the tank.
I purchased my Micro-Mesh paper from
Rockler.com
Ordering was easy and Rockler promptly shipped my order.
Now I only use Micro-Mesh paper for
cleaning my tank:
I made a really big breakthrough with tank maintenance over the weekend. In my research on a way to remove scratches from my acrylic tank, I had read on reefcentral.com about someone attaching a 4000 size Micro-Mesh sandpaper to his cleaning magnet to clean the algae off the panes of his acrylic tank. The major advantage of using the sandpaper over the scrubbing pads usually provided with cleaning magnets is that the scrubbing pads can pick up small particles when you're cleaning close to the surface of the sandbed, and the imbedded particles on the pads can cause some nasty scratches on the inside of the tank.
This weekend, I used 6000 size Micro-Mesh sandpaper instead of a scrubbing pad against the inside Algae Free Tiger Shark magnet and scraped off the brown algae growing right next to the surface of the sandbed. The 6000 size Micro-Mesh was not only more effective than the scrubbing pad at algae scraping, but it picked up absolutely no sand even though at times the edge of the magnet was in the sandbed. I decided to use the 6000 instead of the 4000 size Micro-Mesh since with the very strong Algae Free Tiger Shark magnet against the 3/8" thickness of my 150-gallon tank the 4000 size was buffing the inside of the tank more than I wanted to. You'll have to adjust the type of Micro-Mesh sandpaper you want to use depending on the strength of your magnet and the thickness of your tank.
