StarFire glass or regular?

[hahaximmaxfish]

Okay, what's the difference between StarFire glass and regular glass?

Which would you choose?

[cruiZe]

starphire aka Low Iron aka high clarity. much more clear. normal glass has a greenish tint to it. The ticker the glass, the worse it is. May not be as noticable in a 10 gallon with 1/4 inch glass, but in a 50 gallon with 3/8 or 1/2 inch thick glass the difference will be HUGE. it usually costs twice as much, sometimes more. Very special, very great... YES

[hahaximmaxfish]

Yeah for the elos mini the starfire is 280$ for glass! Haha, thank you!

[imsobored152]

Click the small picture to make it bigger

[hahaximmaxfish]

Click the small picture to make it bigger

Starfire def.

[Narwhal72]

That is one of the biggest forum generated myths out there. Iron is added to the raw material that makes glass (mostly sand and recycled glass shards) to give color to the glass so that it absorbs heat better. This causes the raw material to liquify quicker so they can make more glass per day. This is also why low iron glass costs more. If your energy costs per day are the same but you are making 30% less glass you have to charge more. The amount of iron (2 lbs per 1000 tons) is negligible and has no effect on the hardness of the glass. Low iron glass does not scratch any easier than regular glass. What it does do is show scratches better. This is because the optical clarity is so much higher that very tiny scratches that would go unnoticed on regular green glass stand out. Consequently you have to be more careful when cleaning the glass.

 

Also Starphire doesn't come any thinner than 1/4" thick (size used on a typical 55) because the difference in optical clarity at this thickness compared to green glass is pretty low (2%). The blue edge looks pretty but it doesn't add much clarity to a small tank.

 

Andy

[jdavis28]

Andy,

 

Nice read.