80"long*42"wide*22-24"* tall glass tank thickness

That sounds thin. There is a calculator on www.garf.org that might help

It truly is up to you. I would personally search out other builds in the history of this site (note the diy section was once just the parent of this sub section) and run them against the calculator of your choice. Then make your decisions from there. People are reluctant to answer questions about things like this when you aren't over building something Abrams tank style because both of you would feel bad if your project had a catastrophic failure.

My calculator provides backwards SF checking as well as a few other important things you may want to know before building. http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...rmuds-Glass-and-Acrylic-Calculator-(it-lives) No reason to leave mfk for anything fish related.

At 22", I get a 2.5 safety factor, not 3.5. And no one can say what is "safe." There are assumptions as to the quality of the glass (high grade, store front windows), what might impact the glass (fish, rocks, toys, baseballs), any imperfections on how level the tank is, etc.

The higher the safety factor, the less likely it will fail, but you have to judge all the factors to determine what is enough.

If I had excellent bracing, smallish, inexpensive fish, no kids, freshly made glass from a reputable supplier, and an area where a tank failure was not a disaster (like a garage), I would feel quite comfortable with 2.5. As those factors worsen, I might add more safety until I got to 3.5-3.8. It's just added insurance and some situations don't call for more.

I would bet that most tanks made on this site have not failed and most used around 2.5. Built right, with good glass, and careful owners, I wouldn't be surprised. But tanks do fail or get cracked from time to time.

The actual safety factor for either 22 or 24 inches of fill height is basically 2.7 Garfs page is flawed. I just hopped over to their website and put in the numbers for an all glass. It does in fact say that 3/8's is the recommended glass. Personally their page and recommendations are done with little educative content to allow a person to make an educated choice for their own build.

If you are searching for information about building your own tank use a more robust calculator that allows you to play with the numbers to get a solid idea of what works for you. Using the experience of other people who have built their own tanks is a good thing as well but when you come in with inaccurate information to begin with you may get inaccurate replies and thus make a flawed decision.

Please, do not trust the information from their DIY section for tank building as gospel. Use the best tools available to you to make the best choice for yourself.

3/4" for sure!

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