Shorten a 40 hex?

[treesprite]

I discovered that my empty 40 hex, which I had been trying to sell, has mysteriously suffered the breaking of one of its glass panes going down to about the halfway mark. It's like a V and goes all the way to the seam, so there isn't any chance of it extending for the entire height until unless I myself break it some more (I don't know how it got broken... yes I have a history of breaking tanks, but...) (oh, the strikeout of until was unintentional... saw it after I posted and thought striking it out would be more interesting than simply deleting it, given my history).

 

I'm toying with the idea of the glass being cut down to make a shallow hex tank (I guess it would be 20g), and would like to know what people think about it. It's not like I have a particular  desire or need, and the glass has some aesthetic issues, but a cut-down of the tank would be something "different" to play with. I'm  not good at cutting glass, but enjoy trying; I thought about using a rotary tool and grinding through the glass instead of cutting it, but that would take an eternity.

 

Other than doing that with the tank, does anyone have any other ideas? I imagine if it was patched up, it would be used for a number of other purposes. I thought about growing plants in it, but there isn't enough light in here. I won't do a closed terrarium because the last time I did it, a mosquito got in and I had a nice looking mosquito farm (I had to spray bug spray in the 38g tank it was in, but obviously cleaned it well enough, because I went on to use it for fish and corals with no problem, until I put the clowns in this very same now-broken hex). I could just take it apart until I have some other use for the glass (anyone need hex rims?).

 

I  still have the glass from taking apart the 29g no one wanted for free, and some other random glass pieces from old tanks that were broken this had to be taken apart.... so perhaps I could just make a big puzzle of all of it or create some weird tank shape and put a bunch of damsels, aiptasia, majanos, GSP, kenya tree, xenia, and gorilla crabs in it. I would give it a DSB and a lot of free-growing macros. I would most definitely not connect it to my real system.
 

After all that dreaming when trying to write a simple post, I'm no longer sure about the cutting the tank down to half height or just patching for something else. I like the weirdo tank idea. Can I put together odd thicknesses of glass if my pieces aren't all the same? Some of the glass pieces are tempered and some are not. What would I use for trims?

Edited September 2, 2014 by treesprite