WP's 55gal to 270gal plywood tank conversion

[lauraleellbp]

How many layers of epoxy and glassfiber are you planning?

[jinx©]

Well I've been waiting for this project to take off. (I remember reading/posting in another thread discussing the idea months ago)

Looks like you're off to a great start and I'll be watching this one.

The scary part for me is that I have two ancient thick glassed 55g's sitting in a corner of a four bay garage that are beginning to call out to me when I walk past them....lol

[Orlando]

Awesome. A Jedi Master of DIY.

-O

[Naja002]

Sweeeeeet. Glad to see you are still pursuing this.... See what happens after ya drill that first hole through a wall......

[Wasserpest]

Originally Posted by lauraleellbp

How many layers of epoxy and glassfiber are you planning?

Basically just one layer of epoxy. I painted a second time in areas that seemed to light. This stuff sticks really well to anything, including itself, so I skipped the sanding-in-between.

Originally Posted by jinx©

Well I've been waiting for this project to take off. (I remember reading/posting in another thread discussing the idea months ago)

Looks like you're off to a great start and I'll be watching this one.

The scary part for me is that I have two ancient thick glassed 55g's sitting in a corner of a four bay garage that are beginning to call out to me when I walk past them....lol

Yeah, only took me like two years to get this started. If this works out, I have a larger project already lined up... now that's scary.

Originally Posted by Orlando

Awesome. A Jedi Master of DIY.

-O

Thanks O, hehe, plenty of satisfaction if I can make something and it works afterwards. I don't save money, but I always learn something in the process (even if it is "never do THAT again").

Originally Posted by Naja002

Sweeeeeet. Glad to see you are still pursuing this.... See what happens after ya drill that first hole through a wall......

Yep, that semi-automated waterchange setup seems so innocent now...

[tusk]

There was one swed guy or something of the likes that used a weird "backed" plywood and that was all. He just used a piece of foam under the gravel of the larger objects in the tank.

You plan on any plecos? I never really found the answer I was looking for with them in "DIY" tanks, just a remote horror story or two that could have been made up. Any thoughts? I'd REALLY love a small school of clown plecos but have always been worried about it.

Looking good BTW

[Wasserpest]

Thanks tusk, I guess there are many ways to seal a tank. I recall a Norwegian guy who had some interesting approaches.

Not sure regarding plecos. I know they can do quite some damage to acrylic/plexiglass. Possible that some might start to chew epoxy... lol. I had bristlenoses before, but they turned against my swords.

[BichirAddict]

If you need help go to Monsterfishkeepers.com/forums and their are dozens of pages full of the same subject or similar including a homemade 15,000 gallon tank.

[Down_Shift]

Man Wasser, your DIY's get deeper and deeper.. So sick!

[chuukus]

I have a few questions.
1. Is this gonna be a planted tank?
2. If it's gonna be planted is it going to be high light&CO2?
3. What brand silicone did you use to seal the front glass?

My reason for asking is I am about ready to put my glass in my ply-glass tank and Im thinking of using the tank to breed fish and grow out plants. Im debating on a large sump with a built in hamburger matten filter or a large homeade canister filter.

I just wanted to pick your brain a little about what kind of lighting can penetrate the 24" deep water and still grow the hight light plants. Like you im on a budget and I really dont want metal halide lighting. Im thinking diy T5HO and see how cheap I can get all the parts to light a large tank.
Sorry about asking all these questions im not trying to hijack your thread. I just thougth you might be pondering some of these same questions and I know you have more experience growing plants than me. Im dying to find out what your gonna come up with.

[Wasserpest]

With most of the epoxy applied, the next step before assembling was to glue the glass panels into the front frame. From my dismantled 55gal tank I had two 48x20" sheets of untempered 3/8" glass, which I beveled a little bit with a sander to prevent nasty cuts. The cutout in the front plywood sheet was 46x18", leaving 1" of overlap and glue surface all around.



This one got a bit snug and I had to use some weights to push it down onto the frame. The lesson I learned here was not to put heavy buckets and such on an unprotected glass surface, because it will leave some very ugly scratches. Luckily this was the lower tank which isn't going to be a showtank anyway.



For Silicone, I chose the cheapest, DAP 100% Clear Rubber Silicone Sealant. I could have gone with GE RTV108 (or 103) but I think this isn't really necessary in this situation. In another thread it was mentioned that the glass needs to be joined with the industrial strength silicone in 2 minutes or less, and I am not that quick in applying it.



To prevent the weight of the glass pushing out all the silicone between glass and epoxy coated wood, I cut short sections of silicone airline, cut them length-wise, and duct taped them to the front frame. This worked pretty good. When the silicone was dry, I just pulled them out.



As you can see, I also taped off the sides of the glass to make removing the spilled out silicone a bit easier. I haven't done this so it remains to be seen how difficult it will be without pulling any silicone out of the seam.

[Wasserpest]

Originally Posted by chuukus

I have a few questions.
1. Is this gonna be a planted tank?
2. If it's gonna be planted is it going to be high light&CO2?
3. What brand silicone did you use to seal the front glass?

My reason for asking is I am about ready to put my glass in my ply-glass tank and Im thinking of using the tank to breed fish and grow out plants. Im debating on a large sump with a built in hamburger matten filter or a large homeade canister filter.

I just wanted to pick your brain a little about what kind of lighting can penetrate the 24" deep water and still grow the hight light plants. Like you im on a budget and I really dont want metal halide lighting. Im thinking diy T5HO and see how cheap I can get all the parts to light a large tank.
Sorry about asking all these questions im not trying to hijack your thread. I just thougth you might be pondering some of these same questions and I know you have more experience growing plants than me. Im dying to find out what your gonna come up with.

All good questions, without feedback this thread would be extremely boring. With regards to silicone, please see the previous post.

Here is what I am planning to do with the tank. Currently I have a 100gal tank that I would like to replace with a larger plywood/starphire etc homebuilt tank one day. This garage tank project serves to give me some experience and hopefully confidence to tackle a larger project. When the day comes, whatever plants and fish and substrate that are currently in the 100gal tank need to move somewhere, and that will be most likely this garage tank. Also, I have a 10gal tank that I want to take down and basically move its contents to this new tank.

The new garage tank will be medium light, with pressurized CO2 and fertilizers. I haven't really finalized my lighting plans, but I will probably build my usual slim canopies with 4 T5HO 54W bulbs. Instead of expensive reflectors, I will paint the canopy white. It will be covered from the bottom with a removable sheet of acrylic. There will be fans to keep the temperature in the canopy down.

I will buy cheap endcaps from Reefgeek, and use two 128W Advance ballasts (one each to drive two bulbs) from Home Depot. Overall, this is probably as inexpensive as it gets. So, less than 2W/gal, but medium light level since this is a comparatively large tank. If you want to go high light, you can probably add more bulbs, or overdrive them using (expensive) Icecap ballasts.

No experience when it comes to sumps, so I can't comment on that. Planning to use big sponges to filter this tank, I will go into more detail soon.

Next steps are to assemble the tank, finish epoxy, paint the remaining wood surfaces with some water repelling spar polyurethane varnish, get the plumbing started, and place the tank on its concrete base. I was planning to get all this done this year, but the little things always take more time than expected, so this tank might not see any water until next year.

[D-007]

I'm watching this as I am curious as to how well the Coat-It does.

I read on their site that it is Reinforced with Kevlar fibers for Extra Strength so I'm hoping that it'll be just as good (if not better) as if using epoxy and fiberglass.

Fingers crossed also that it'll not be toxic to any fish.

Great job so far
D

[chuukus]

Yeah the sheet says it has ceramic beads, graphite and kevlar fibers if this stuff was thick enough I bet it would stop a bullet. This sounds like some amazing stuff and it must be seein how they reccomend it for truck bed liners the bottom of kyacks. This stuff is designed to take a serious beating.
I wish I was like wasserpest I thought I did my homework when buying epoxy. Then he comes up with this stuff that is made to stop a bullet and for halph the price.
Yes I hope its non toxic to fish also it sounds like its gonna have a long time to cure. If its not worst case sinerio hell just have to buy like a quart of non toxic epoxy and go over this goop.

[Wasserpest]

Thanks guys, it did take me quite a while to figure out which epoxy to use. Remains to be seen if this stuff is toxic or not. One of the suggested applications is for coating animal troughs, which indicates that there are no extremely poisonous things leaching out. I'll do some extended testing with shrimp to determine if it is safe for fishies.

Just finishing up the last epoxy touches on the lower tank before attaching the top tank, which will limit access to the lower filter compartment somewhat. Also started to coat the remaining wood surfaces with Spar Polyurethane. Now that stuff stinks...