Glass thickness for 12ft all glass?

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Jack Dempsey
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Feb 16, 2012
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Hi after getting a few quotes from glass companies I'm now sure that I am going to go with an all glass build as its easiest to disassemble and move compared to concrete or plywood. Now what I'm not sure of is what the minimum glass thickness is that I could get away with.. with some top bracing for 12ft long by 4ft by 4ft
Thanks

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I would think with a tank that size you would want to use acrylic. But If you plan to built it on site yourself I could see why you would use glass. Even if you plan to assemble yourself the individual panes of glass will be extremely heavy.
After plug in the dimensions in this calculator: http://www.theaquatools.com/building-your-aquarium
and doing the conversions It says you need a glass thickness of 1.1811 inches and the weight of each pane will be 3353.231 pounds!
This is with a safety factor of 2.5 you can play around with this number and see the different results. This calculator is just a reference and may or may not be ideal values. It just gives you a starting point.
 
The thickness needed for a glass aquarium is based upon the height of the aquarium (length and width have little bearing). As the height increases, so does the required glass thickness.
 
Hi Dennis

I have a 10*4*28" made of 15mm. Safety factor = 3.5, I believe
The original height was 30" but that would mean 19mm glass and the cost would almost double.

4ft high made of glass...you´re probably looking at 2x15mm glass. It will be costy...
 
BIG-G said:
I would think with a tank that size you would want to use acrylic. But If you plan to built it on site yourself I could see why you would use glass. Even if you plan to assemble yourself the individual panes of glass will be extremely heavy.
After plug in the dimensions in this calculator: http://www.theaquatools.com/building-your-aquarium
and doing the conversions It says you need a glass thickness of 1.1811 inches and the weight of each pane will be 3353.231 pounds!
This is with a safety factor of 2.5 you can play around with this number and see the different results. This calculator is just a reference and may or may not be ideal values. It just gives you a starting point.
Click to expand...

You are right that it would be heavy, but not that heavy.

With the largest pane being 144"x48"x1.1811" you end up with ~4.72 cubic feet of glass (144x48x1.1811/1728) at 161 pounds per cubic foot, for a weight of about 760 pounds.
 
joe jaskot said:
The thickness needed for a glass aquarium is based upon the height of the aquarium (length and width have little bearing). As the height increases, so does the required glass thickness.
Click to expand...

You need to consider deflection also. The longer a material is, whether its glass, wood, steel, ect; the more deflection there will be. Think about a pencil. A short pencil is harder to break than a long pencil because it deflects less. Another example is that I could build a 10 gallon tank that's about 2 feet long by 1 foot high with 3/16" glass, but I shouldn't use that same 3/16" glass to build a 12 foot long tank which is 1 foot high because the glass will deflect too much. That thin sheet of glass would probably break well before I put any water in the tank.
 
coolkeith said:
You need to consider deflection also. The longer a material is, whether its glass, wood, steel, ect; the more deflection there will be. Think about a pencil. A short pencil is harder to break than a long pencil because it deflects less. Another example is that I could build a 10 gallon tank that's about 2 feet long by 1 foot high with 3/16" glass, but I shouldn't use that same 3/16" glass to build a 12 foot long tank which is 1 foot high because the glass will deflect too much. That thin sheet of glass would probably break well before I put any water in the tank.
Click to expand...
With proper bracing on a long tank, there would be no deflection.
 
If you are serious about that size tank as a diy project with all glass panels you have some big pockets and b*lls. I built a 15 foot long by 3 feet wide by 30" deep tank out of wood with acrylic windows. I made one brace in center to allow both sides to be open. I used three 2x4s stacked across the front top and still got 1/4" bow across the 7.5' span. Is this a show tank? If not I would personally design and build out of wood. You could make the panels individually and bolt together with a gasket from the outside. That way you could disassemble and move pretty easy.

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joe jaskot said:
With proper bracing on a long tank, there would be no deflection.
Click to expand...
Not true. There would be some deflection, even if you added vertical bracing every 18 inches or so. Top bracing is a given, especially with that thin of glass. There is more engineering involved than just water pressure also.
 
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