Bowed 300 What to do?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
This thing sounds salvagable to me. If you was able to remove the top braces so that you could slide a half inch thick piece cut to fit on the inside and welded it in place, that should do it. Those two .25 pieces are the problem. Leaving them in place but adding the .50 on the inside would be a lot of reinforcement.

I suppose you could notch the top braces to do this, and then repairing them with overlapping pieces to cover the notches. Might look like crap, but it would be doable.
 
I wouldn't have a problem bracing the back...... I've just heard horror stories of trying to brace acrylic and the crap cracking when trying to hold it in it's original posision, since it stretches with time.......

What I don't understand is what the hell a name brand manufacturer is doing putting thier name on something that (according to most thickness calculators I've looked at) should have NEVER been built in the first place. I thought it looked thin for the height but thought "What the hell, They put thier name on it so it should be fine right????" And what do I get? "I wouldn't trust that in my house......" LOL. We'll put our name on it, and sell you a new one, but since you trusted our name over common sense here is your prize my friend..........
 
Judging by my calculations approximately 60 bottles to fill to 300 gallon capacity, however I am unsure of how much volume would be taken up after I am submersed.
 
Yeah, that doubled up .25 sounds like a rig job. If it came from the factory like that, that's pretty bad. If this was previously owned, it was almost certainly them that did that rig job.

But if you welded a perfectly fit .50 in the inside, it would be fine. Perfectly fit is the key though because it would be the welding of the new sheet to the sides and bottom and the top reinforcements that would matter, not the back pieces. So what I'm saying is that its the side edges of the new piece that would be adding strength, not the facing surfaces. So those edges would have to be perfectly mated to the inside surfaces.

But yeah, I have seen people try to fix acrylic tanks by just welding in "surface patches", but those fixes are not optimal.
 
I'm about 99.9% sure that this is all factory. Like I said earlier the overflows are built in against the back, and judging by the overflow teeth these are a factory cut as well.

IF I am going to be going out and buying a plexi slab to reinforce the back I think I might just rather build a plywood tank.........
 
Well, if it will make you feel any better, I bought a used 55 gallon plexi tank about a year ago. Brought it home, all excited; because I got it at a great deal. Filled it up and it bowed. I went :WHOA: and emptied it out. It was too big to toss in the trash bin, so I ended up dumping it into someones truck when it was midnight. Promised myself I'd never buy another plexi tank again, unless I see it filled before purchase.
 
Dude, plywood DIY's are a total can of worms. You're already there with the tank you have. It holds the water, it just bows. So you have only one technical feat to make it work: getting a perfectly cut piece of acrylic welded in. That's nothing compared to starting from scratch on a plywood build. It sounds like either way, you'll be buying a sheet of acrylic. Either buy and be done, or buy and just be getting started...
 
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