Backstory:
A few months ago I bought a 380 Gallon Acrylic and I wanted to build a wet/dry filter. I spent a few weeks obsessing over the design, looking for parts (tank and glass), and ordered the silicone.
Tank Preparation:
The first think I needed was rather large aquarium that was no more than 18" wide - this was to keep the option open to house the sump inside my stand.
I can thank a local saltwater forum for this find - a 95 gallon long with 1/2" thick glass that just so happens to be 18" exactly without the black rims. And it only cost me $40.
There were only two issues with the tank, the black rim was in bad shape and the corner silicone was flaking bad. I was assured that it held water, but to be safe I resealed the corners since I had to do some silicone work anyway.
Scrapping the silicone out was not that bad since it was old and the top came right off.
Glass dividers:
The next task was to find enough properly sized glass to act as divider.
Here is a mockup so the I could determine the size of glass I needed to acquire
Based on the design I chose, I needed six pieces of glass. I bought a 10 gallon from a guy at work for only $5 and it was money well spent since I destroyed most of the tank trying to salvage the glass.
Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures, but lets just say silicone is strong
and the glass does not come apart even after removing nearly all the silicone. What I learned was to use a glass cutter to score the sides of the tank (the smallest pieces) and intentionally break them to leave the remaining three pieces of glass. The remaining pieces will come apart easily since they are now only supported by one edge.
Well the first tank yielded only two pieces of glass and after an exhaustive search around town, I discovered that sheet glass is expensive and somewhat difficult to come by.
Not to worry. The LFS had a dollar-a-gallon sale, so I picked up a 29 gallon "donor" tank that just needed some work to get what I needed
I began by removing the black rims which lead to what may be considered my dumbest act yet. Let's just say a utility knife slipped, someone's hand was in the way, and said person spent the next two hours getting a few stitches
(you can read all about it here).
This time the silicone did not come off nearly as easy considering it was new and I spent the next four days scrapping and cleaning silicone.
Here are the resulting sheets
I like how you can see the ducting from the ceiling in the reflection on the glass
Assembly:
I also purchased Dow Corning RTV-832 even though the color options were not preferred, but this tank will not be for show so I went with a very dark black.
Well the day finally came, I could start building!
The pieces that were floating (i.e. not touching the bottom of the tank) were to be 3" from the bottom, so I cut some 1" PVC to rest the glass on while it dried.
Here is the tank with post-it notes in roughly the right place.
I measured and marked the tank up, then re-measured, then moved to the other side, then re-measured, then I measured again... this went on for some time since I can be OCD about this stuff... And I knew I would not have the luxury of time when the silicone started to flow
So I cleaned all the edged of the divider one last time and went to work.
This is me verifying the divider is sqaure
I decided to assembly in two steps.
First the floating dividers, then after it setup for 24 hours, I did what I call the "overflow" dividers.
Here is the end of step one, the floating dividers are in and square as can be
The next day - complete at last!
I ended up only using a single tube of silicone even though I bought three
You may notice a thin layer of silicone on the top rim of the tank. I had just enough left in the tube to put a "protective" layer to avoid the somewhat sharp edges. I really did this just because I could
Conclusion:
This was a labor intensive process - well the removing of silicone was the most intense, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
I would encourage anyone planning on building a wet/dry, to do it themselves.
Total cost was about $85
-$40 for the 95 gallon
-$29 for the 29 gallon donor
-$15 for the silicone with shipping
The only thing left to do is a water test in a week or so when the silicone fully cures. The fish better enjoy this
A few months ago I bought a 380 Gallon Acrylic and I wanted to build a wet/dry filter. I spent a few weeks obsessing over the design, looking for parts (tank and glass), and ordered the silicone.
Tank Preparation:
The first think I needed was rather large aquarium that was no more than 18" wide - this was to keep the option open to house the sump inside my stand.
I can thank a local saltwater forum for this find - a 95 gallon long with 1/2" thick glass that just so happens to be 18" exactly without the black rims. And it only cost me $40.
There were only two issues with the tank, the black rim was in bad shape and the corner silicone was flaking bad. I was assured that it held water, but to be safe I resealed the corners since I had to do some silicone work anyway.
Scrapping the silicone out was not that bad since it was old and the top came right off.
Glass dividers:
The next task was to find enough properly sized glass to act as divider.
Here is a mockup so the I could determine the size of glass I needed to acquire
Based on the design I chose, I needed six pieces of glass. I bought a 10 gallon from a guy at work for only $5 and it was money well spent since I destroyed most of the tank trying to salvage the glass.
Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures, but lets just say silicone is strong
and the glass does not come apart even after removing nearly all the silicone. What I learned was to use a glass cutter to score the sides of the tank (the smallest pieces) and intentionally break them to leave the remaining three pieces of glass. The remaining pieces will come apart easily since they are now only supported by one edge. Well the first tank yielded only two pieces of glass and after an exhaustive search around town, I discovered that sheet glass is expensive and somewhat difficult to come by.
Not to worry. The LFS had a dollar-a-gallon sale, so I picked up a 29 gallon "donor" tank that just needed some work to get what I needed
I began by removing the black rims which lead to what may be considered my dumbest act yet. Let's just say a utility knife slipped, someone's hand was in the way, and said person spent the next two hours getting a few stitches
(you can read all about it here).This time the silicone did not come off nearly as easy considering it was new and I spent the next four days scrapping and cleaning silicone.
Here are the resulting sheets
I like how you can see the ducting from the ceiling in the reflection on the glass
Assembly:
I also purchased Dow Corning RTV-832 even though the color options were not preferred, but this tank will not be for show so I went with a very dark black.
Well the day finally came, I could start building!
The pieces that were floating (i.e. not touching the bottom of the tank) were to be 3" from the bottom, so I cut some 1" PVC to rest the glass on while it dried.
Here is the tank with post-it notes in roughly the right place.
I measured and marked the tank up, then re-measured, then moved to the other side, then re-measured, then I measured again... this went on for some time since I can be OCD about this stuff... And I knew I would not have the luxury of time when the silicone started to flow
So I cleaned all the edged of the divider one last time and went to work.
This is me verifying the divider is sqaure
I decided to assembly in two steps.
First the floating dividers, then after it setup for 24 hours, I did what I call the "overflow" dividers.
Here is the end of step one, the floating dividers are in and square as can be
The next day - complete at last!
I ended up only using a single tube of silicone even though I bought three
You may notice a thin layer of silicone on the top rim of the tank. I had just enough left in the tube to put a "protective" layer to avoid the somewhat sharp edges. I really did this just because I could
Conclusion:
This was a labor intensive process - well the removing of silicone was the most intense, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
I would encourage anyone planning on building a wet/dry, to do it themselves.
Total cost was about $85
-$40 for the 95 gallon
-$29 for the 29 gallon donor
-$15 for the silicone with shipping
The only thing left to do is a water test in a week or so when the silicone fully cures. The fish better enjoy this
