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Will I waste many a tank during the learning process? Can anyone give me a few pointers?

thanks

I did not find it too difficult but have only done it once.
I got the diamond bit from Lee Valley. It looks like a little tube with diamond powder at the end. I set up a stand outside and arranged the aquarium so that the glass I was drilling was resting flat on a wooden board. I installed the drill on a small portable drill press and secured it the the aquarium so that it would not move. I installed a garden hose so that a gentle stream of water would continually flow on the drill bit without causing electrical shock. Then I went down very slowly until the bit was bitting in the wood. It took just a couple of minutes of drilling. I used the drill freehand after that to enlarge the hole slightly (I think that was a bit riskier but everything went well)

I did it to about 20 tanks, and it's not that bad. With that said, the word drilling is misleading. It's more of scratching the glass away. Keep this in mind so you're not as naiive as I was thinking it would cut through in a minute. I averaged around 15 or more minutes per hole (10 gallon glass thickness). I used a cheap $20 drill press which made life easier. Instead of the constant flow, I used clay to hold the press in place and then filled that with cold water to cool it etc.
Best,
Justin

As long as the bottom isn't tempered, it'll probably come out ok. Tempered glass tends to break when drilled. If it's a small tank and it breaks, replacing the glass isn't a big deal.

I bought the bit to drill mine, but have yet to try it. I think with my future project I will try it, but have yet to figure out if I want to do 4 20gal highs or my own custom tanks.
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Kyle
www.kylesphotos.com
1.2.0 D. leucomelas
0.0.2 D. azureus
1.0.1 D. imitators

It really is not that hard. I drilled about 24 1 3/4" holes today. But I was using a glass drilling press made just for doing just that. Just use the right bit(diamond dusted) and go slow, and when you are just about to break through, go real easy or you will have a bunch chips around the edge. And keep a good amount of coolant on it. But you will need some type of drill press. What size of tank are you working on, and what size is the hole you are planning to drill?

Be careful what type of bit you use. The one I got on the internet had fairly coarse diamond grit, and it takes 15 to 20 minutes to drill a 1 1/8" hole in a 10 gal tank. I checked at a local glass shop and their bits have extremely fine diamond grit, he says it should take only a minute or two to drill the hole. Also he recommended a antifreeze/water mix for cooling. So I'm ordering 1 1/8" bit for the bulkhead drain, 11 mm for the misters from Patrick at Saurian, and 3" for computer fan and vent openings. Tanks are 18 gal tall, and will have hinged fronts. I think I'm going to need a drill press...

Let's think this through: (1) buy a diamond drill bit (not cheap); (2) buy a drill press (again, not cheap); (3) run the risk of cracking or breaking a (not cheap) tank. Okay, so why don't you pay someone at a glass shop to drill it out? If they break it, they buy it.

I had a friend who was a big-time angelfish breeder. He had forty 40 gallon tanks drilled for $80 (that's $2 per tank--in other words CHEAP). Now, that was 10 years ago, but I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone even mention it. It's worth checking out.
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Homer W. Faucett III, esq.
Purveyor of Trivialities and Fine Nonsense

Here's a link describing how to drill glass. It looks more like a grinding away process than a "drilling" process, as one of the posts above stated.
Link