Habitat - Indoor :: Hot glue

[bently11]

Does hot glue hold up underwater? Or is there another material I should use instead of hot glue to keep things together. I want to hot glue a pice of egg crate inside my stock tank.

[Chrisbarnett]

Thebean used hot glue successfully in his tank. I have not tried it, but he said it worked just fine.

You could use aquarium silicone, that's what I use for anything I need to stick down.

[Daniel3507]

here is a post i found about hot glue. maybe it could help you out.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/sh ... hp?t=26254

[TheBean]

It does but you need to use it a certain way. The glue looses it's stickiness underwater even after curing so you're going to want to try and "wrap" the pieces you're gluing in the glue. Or make sure both pieces are very rough or porous so the glue has something to grab onto. The glue does stay solid underwater, but it looses that stickiness that bonds smooth or even relatively smooth surfaces.

For example, I hot glued some gravel to the bottoms of my fake aquarium plants to give them weight and the glue is holding up fine because I used a ton of it and covered every rock with the glue. I also glued a suction cup to the side of the stock tank to hold the filter exhaust tube in place but the suction cup came loose because it and the stock tank wall were too smooth.

[Chrisbarnett]

Sounds to me like hot glue is extra work for not that fantastic of a hold. I used aquarium silicone to hold down the rocks on my plant base(as you guys know) and it has held up extremely well.

[TheBean]

You're pretty much correct. It worked for me and I had it layin around. But there are a lot of things that hot glue can't hold underwater.

[bently11]

So, do you think I should secure the egg crate with aquarium silicone? It's not going to be underwater, I'm thinking more kind of towards the rim.

[Chrisbarnett]

No I don't think aquarium silicone would be your best bet in that case. You should look into using 5 minute 2-part epoxy. it's readily available at pretty much any hardware store, and even target or walmart.

[bently11]

Ok, thanks!

[TheBean]

Epoxy FTW. Magical glue that stuff is.

[Kool]

I would use hot glue on anything out of water but i would highly reccomend aquarium silicone for in and out of water

[untsmurf]

Hot glue doesn't hold for that long. You can look for glue that is specifically meant for plastic material. I don't know if it's the same as the type of glue that Chris mentioned, his will work wonderfully as well!