Questions in regards to glass tank repair

[Bogertophis]

All that work to fix it sure wouldn't be worth my time but I can't speak for yours. I don't know of any chemical that removes silicone, just manual scraping.
(any chemical that corrosive wouldn't be very nice to hang around with anyway...) The thing is, the plastic framing dries out & breaks after so many years,
& since some has already broken, the rest is probably not far behind, & you need ALL the framing to support the glass. If you want to take it all apart, just
saving the glass, and rebuild it, I know they sell wood molding that forms a right angle, and maybe the same thing made of other materials too, but that's an
awful lot of work for scratched glass, & I wouldn't trust it to hold together without doing all that. Glass is heavy, even without water in it, so for safety you
wouldn't just want to stick on a piece of molding to make it look OK, as the molding is essential to the structure. So by the time you buy all that plus do all
the work, you might as well buy a new tank for $1 per gallon. I would...

You don't want to use the kind of glass lid they sell for fish with a snake: Corn snakes need the ventilation. I make my own lids of wood frame with "hard-
ware cloth" (welded wire screen), or Petco will sell you theirs for quite a bit, & they need clips to secure. What ever you go with, corn snakes WILL push
up on the lid, so you need to make it escape proof. If you make a wood/screen top, you can chain the corners of the lid to whatever the tank sits on, by
installing eye bolts, buying multi-purpose lightweight chain & using "dog leash" type clips (all sold in hardware stores)...no snake can EVER push that kind
of lid off.

BTW, I'm a keeper of corn & various rat snakes, and yes, glass tanks are perfect for them. Adult corn snakes do well in a 40 gallon, as you were figuring.