1 The idea
A long time ago I read about large plywood tanks. Fools, I thought... wood and water? A couple of years back I started wondering about it some more, comparing a plywood tank to a commercial glass tank. The economics didn't add up, so I bought a 55gal tank and forgot about plywood. More recently, the idea surfaced again. Now I am less worried about the economic side of it, but thrilled with the idea of a large home-built tank, with lots of invisible plumbing, water change system, and a generous depth, to fit exactly into a place where a 100gal tank sits now.
I am no professional wood worker, and before attempting something like that, I wanted to first get some on-hand experience to reduce the risk of a major screw-up, like flooding my house with several hundred gallons of water. So I started looking at my neglected 55gal tank with it's lack of depth and figured the nice big front and back glass might work well in a larger plywood construction.
Sitting in the garage, it wouldn't have to be perfect, and if it catastrophically failed, the worst that could happen is a lot of water draining out of my garage door.
In this journal I am going to show pictures of what I did step by step and the results of it. I don't want to challenge your patience, and had no clear idea if it would work (still don't) and how long it was going to take to finish. So by now I am a few steps ahead, and some of the epoxy is already drying.
But this is how it started...
1 The idea (this post)
2 Planning and preparation (next post)
3 Smashing a perfectly fine tank and building a foundation
4 Plywood, screws, glue and sand paper
5 Epoxy
6 Glass & Silicone
7 Plumbing & Filtration
8 Lighting
9 Moving it into place
10 Wet Day
11 Substrate
12 Conclusion
13 Top Lessons learned
A long time ago I read about large plywood tanks. Fools, I thought... wood and water? A couple of years back I started wondering about it some more, comparing a plywood tank to a commercial glass tank. The economics didn't add up, so I bought a 55gal tank and forgot about plywood. More recently, the idea surfaced again. Now I am less worried about the economic side of it, but thrilled with the idea of a large home-built tank, with lots of invisible plumbing, water change system, and a generous depth, to fit exactly into a place where a 100gal tank sits now.
I am no professional wood worker, and before attempting something like that, I wanted to first get some on-hand experience to reduce the risk of a major screw-up, like flooding my house with several hundred gallons of water. So I started looking at my neglected 55gal tank with it's lack of depth and figured the nice big front and back glass might work well in a larger plywood construction.
Sitting in the garage, it wouldn't have to be perfect, and if it catastrophically failed, the worst that could happen is a lot of water draining out of my garage door.
In this journal I am going to show pictures of what I did step by step and the results of it. I don't want to challenge your patience, and had no clear idea if it would work (still don't) and how long it was going to take to finish. So by now I am a few steps ahead, and some of the epoxy is already drying.
But this is how it started...
1 The idea (this post)
2 Planning and preparation (next post)
3 Smashing a perfectly fine tank and building a foundation
4 Plywood, screws, glue and sand paper
5 Epoxy
6 Glass & Silicone
7 Plumbing & Filtration
8 Lighting
9 Moving it into place
10 Wet Day
11 Substrate
12 Conclusion
13 Top Lessons learned