300 Gallon Tank Build

[Goomie]

Hello R2R!

As some of you might have seen in the "newbie" section, my boyfriend and I are going to build our own tank to fit in the corner of our room. Ideally, it will be right around 300 gallons and will be rectangular, with custom made cabinetry from floor to ceiling and a walkway behind the tank (hidden by cabinets).

Tank dimensions will be as follows:
L 60" x W 24" x H 48"
299.22 Gallons according to a volume calculator.

At this point we are assuming, because the tank will have a height of 4', that we will need 1" thick acrylic for the build. Does anyone think this is overkill?
Any advice would be welcome

 

[JPG@CFI]

Actually, you will need 1.5" cell cast for that height. If you want to use 1", stick to a 36" height. I build acrylic tanks for a living for the last 15 years, and have built tanks up to 60" tall. Let me know if you need anything, Jason

 

[Goomie]

Hmm. 1.5 inches thick.. That is going to be difficult to find around here. We live in a pretty small/rural area, closest major city is Eugene, OR and it's still 45 minutes away. I guess more research is required in this situation! But we are still in the pre-stages of planning and have yet to clear the corner which we will be building in. The corner currently has a wood stove and some river rock type flooring. We will need to break up the rock and get the stove out. Hopefully we can sell the stove for the money we will need for this acrylic lol.

What size of a sump tank would be recommended for this tank? I was thinking, if it's that big, we will need a fairly large sump as well. This will help us plan for the amount of acrylic to order up.

 

[JPG@CFI]

Very few suppliers carry 1" let alone1.5". You just have to order it up 2 weeks or so before you need it. Your sump should be 1/3 to 1/2 the volume of the display. Are you planning on doing the machining of the acrylic? What solvent do you plan on using. If you have little or no experience with this kind of fabrication, you may consider that 300 gallons on the floor will not save you any money. The taller the tank, the more force is on the bonded joints. Not a good first time project. A road trip to seattle would be worth your time, Jason

 

[Goomie]

Well first things first, finding that supplier lol. The tank shouldn't be too hard, my bf has contracting experience and knows a lot about working with acrylic.

 

[Goomie]

For right now we are asking for whatever help anyone can offer regarding the actual tank. A steel stand and wooden cabinets won't be an issue. What kind of glue do you recommend?

 

[tyler1503]

Hmm. 1.5 inches thick.. That is going to be difficult to find around here. We live in a pretty small/rural area, closest major city is Eugene, OR and it's still 45 minutes away. I guess more research is required in this situation! But we are still in the pre-stages of planning and have yet to clear the corner which we will be building in. The corner currently has a wood stove and some river rock type flooring. We will need to break up the rock and get the stove out. Hopefully we can sell the stove for the money we will need for this acrylic lol.

What size of a sump tank would be recommended for this tank? I was thinking, if it's that big, we will need a fairly large sump as well. This will help us plan for the amount of acrylic to order up.

Most people recommend anywhere between 1/3 - 1/2. I think that was said above already
But realistically it can be just about any size. My sump is 1/6 the size of the display. It's roughly a 20gal sump but it only holds about 12 gallons of water. All a sump is used for is a place to add supplements, fresh water for top offs, perhaps a refugium and a place to hide ugly equipment. The extra water volume is a plus too, but your display is planned at being 300 gallons, so having too little water volume isn't much of an issue lol.

 

[Goomie]

Thanks for the input! Once we get the acrylic ordered up and this darned stove out of here, we can really get down to business. Right now its about the $$$, selling this awesome stove will give us the necessary funds to begin ordering what we need. We can take a month or so to begin clearing out the area and reinforcing the floor. We are on a "second story"... which I say loosely because this house is freaking huge ha. We have an entire area of the garage below us that can have extra support put up.

That being said, we also need to go to a scrap yard for the steel we will need for the frame. Plenty of those here for sure. Since the only entrances to this room are very small doors/hallways, we HAVE to build the entire tank up here unless we want to try to hoist it through a window... which probably still wouldn't work because the windows are so tiny.

Tomorrow, I will take pictures of the area which we will be renovating and also of the perspective drawing I did of our concept. (I have an art background...thank goodness my boyfriend's construction background!)

 

[Goomie]

This is the concept drawing I did of our idea. Not QUITE to spec because I didn't measure when I was drawing it but a good plan for what we would like it to look like. lol.

Feel free to make fun of my not-so-wonderful artistic skills there is a reason I never made it as an artist ha.

 

[Goomie]

The corner in which we will be building the tank. Excuse the dog, he's just there for scale I figure, come colder times, that stove will fetch a pretty good price.

 

[sk8elenex92]

**** first tank and this is what you guys are building. Crazy crazy. Good luck tho. Gonna follow along.

 

[Goomie]

Thank you! We have a lot of planning to do and the real construction likely won't start until the climate gets cooler and people want a wood stove for their house lol.

 

[Goomie]

Does anyone know anything about Plastic Sheets, Plastic Rods, Plastic Tubing - Plexiglass & More ? We are thinking of ordering the acrylic we need from this website.

Also, is there a way to support the non-viewing sides of the tank (such as the back, bottom, and sides) with thick plywood in an attempt to save our cost on acrylic? We decided to shorten the tank to 36" and make it 36" deep, so that we can go to a thinner acrylic. My bf was talking about supporting the non-viewing sides with thick plywood and then using metal framing on top of that. (That's his background in construction talking.)

Questions, questions, questions! I'm so sorry that I'm so buggy!

 

[tonymission]

Most people recommend anywhere between 1/3 - 1/2. I think that was said above already
But realistically it can be just about any size. My sump is 1/6 the size of the display. It's roughly a 20gal sump but it only holds about 12 gallons of water. All a sump is used for is a place to add supplements, fresh water for top offs, perhaps a refugium and a place to hide ugly equipment. The extra water volume is a plus too, but your display is planned at being 300 gallons, so having too little water volume isn't much of an issue lol.

Sort of. You also need enough room in your sump for a power outage. Return pump stops, tank drains and you better be able to handle that or you're screwed.

And I'm all about saving money, but have you put together a list of everything you'll need to get this tank running and maintained? If you're already stressing about the funds required to do it, everything is more expensive with a large tank. I know your BF is handy but I doubt he's going to build a skimmer, power heads, live rock, water and a ton of other stuff along the way. Take your forecast and then probably double it... just something to keep in mind.

 

[Goomie]

Oh yes, we have been pricing the cost of the skimmers and pumps and so forth. We started with our LFS and have been working our way to online prices.

Getting those things one by one over the next few years isn't bad. Its the initial cost of acrylic that we worry most about. A tank that size pre-made is pretty expensive, and the acrylic for it isn't much better. Luckily we haven't started anything yet so plenty of room for planning

 

[Wild1]

Was thinking the same thing, but good luck here too!

 

[Wild1]

**** first tank and this is what you guys are building. Crazy crazy. Good luck tho. Gonna follow along.

I was thinking the same thing, good luck here also! Sorry for double post, didn't know how to delete 1st one

 

[Goomie]

Thanks for the support!

 

[dmort]

What if you bought a fairly big, admittedly smaller yang than your considering, and built out the area around it? Or hey a Longer and therefore shorter (less tall) tank and ended up with more cabinet either above or below the tank. Finally, while people don't often build pumps successfully, they do sometimes build skimmers. Google.

 

[Goomie]

We have been researching every possibility so far nothing is set in stone right now, but in the end we do want the tank we are dreaming of in the corner. We may start with a less permanent set up until we have all the materials needed for the big tank.