# Is silicone strong enough to hold up wood?



## Loui1203 (Sep 29, 2011)

I'm constructing a 10 gallon vertical tank and right now I'm working on the background. I have a large piece of corkbark weighing about 2lbs, a piece of wood weighing about 4 lbs, and two small rocks weighing about 1/2 lbs each. Will aquarium safe silicone alone be strong enough to hold these to the glass?
Or should I use Great Stuff? Where do you buy the black GS?
I'm trying to avoid GS since it's a mess and silicone is easier to conceal, but if that's the only way to hold up the wood and rocks I can use it.


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## Ozydego (Mar 26, 2012)

I think it depends on the surface area you have the silicone, the rocks seem to be the most issue to me, unless they have a flat side. Silicone holds together aquariums with hundreds of punds of water pressing on them, but bigger surface area... I would only be worried about rocks peeling off, the wood and cork I wouldnt worry about.... I used GS on mine just to create a transition from the wood to glass...


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## mrzoggs (May 27, 2012)

Loui1203 said:


> I'm constructing a 10 gallon vertical tank and right now I'm working on the background. I have a large piece of corkbark weighing about 2lbs, a piece of wood weighing about 4 lbs, and two small rocks weighing about 1/2 lbs each. Will aquarium safe silicone alone be strong enough to hold these to the glass?
> Or should I use Great Stuff? *Where do you buy the black GS*?
> I'm trying to avoid GS since it's a mess and silicone is easier to conceal, but if that's the only way to hold up the wood and rocks I can use it.


got mine from lowes. they have 3 different kinds i think.


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## fieldnstream (Sep 11, 2009)

Ive used silicone to attach relatively large pieces of driftwood (6ish lbs) to glass with no problems. I did gs around the wood to help hold it in place (almost like a wedge), may be something to consider. As was mentioned earlier, silicone is surprisingly strong as long as it can form a good bond.


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## Pacblu202 (May 8, 2012)

I would recommend the GS. In my experiences, silicone can be hard to get rocks to hold. I have only done it to GS though, never to glass. You can get it at lowes, menards, id imagine home depot. I just bought some at meijer (yellow kind though) but it was a bit more expensive.


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## Cfrog (Oct 28, 2011)

black g s is the waterfall pond sealent at lowes


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## chin_monster (Mar 12, 2006)

An adhesive silicone (not the stuff from HD, etc) will work much better for securing items than the normal GE I or II that readily available at home improvement stores


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## Pumilo (Sep 4, 2010)

I'm with Field. I've hung some good sized pieces of wood with GE silicone 1. Instead of Field's Great Stuff wedge, I applied a sort of wedge with the silicone. The wood is both siliconed in place and it also sits on the silicone wedge.
Here are a few pics of how they look after growing in. The first one does touch the ground at the back, but is siliconed to the side and would drop like a rock of not glued in. The next two are completely supported by the silicone against either side. For scale, each of those vivs is 12" across, 24" front to back, 24" tall (about 25 gallon slope fronts)


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## cschub13 (Apr 27, 2011)

I have used silicone to adhere driftwood to the glass with no issues at all. I just covered the surface area that was flush, and then also on the edges of the wood and pushed in some cocofiber to make it look better and add support. If it is a larger piece it could help to rest the wood against something else and the glass or have it extend down to the substrate.


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## Loui1203 (Sep 29, 2011)

Thank you for all of your input! I really appreciate it.

I still haven't made up my mind on which to use. The pond sealant is more expensive than I thought it'd be ($13) where as silicone and great stuff are only about $5. I think I'll end up using silicone for the wood and the rocks have flat backs so if I use enough silicone I think it'll hold. 
I'm bad at making decisions with these things since I made a few mistakes on my last build and I want to make sure I don't on this build.

On a somewhat separate note, do any of you know any good links of people camouflaging plastic plant pots in their vivs without using great stuff? I did a search on it with not much luck. I was thinking about siliconing fake pillow moss on it.


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## Ozydego (Mar 26, 2012)

I know ppl use the same silicone/cocofiber method for GS backgrounds for covering pots as well, mixing in spangum moss as well to disguise it. 

For me I decided that the GS was all going to be covered in coco fiber/ecoearth, so I went with the regular stuff... a lot cheaper. it expands more too. I used GE silicone II brown for the silicone and I have to say I am very impressed with the results... I researched many different backgrounds and the only easier ones were cork or coco mat backgrounds, but not as natural looking. If you are bad at decisions, I would do the GS/silicone route, lots of opportunity to change your mind during the process and it usually always ends up looking good


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