Busted 90g into 250g ply tank - safe?

[danz]

So I picked up a busted 90g from a friend, the back pane looked like it had been shot out by a bb gun and I was initially thinking about replacing the it but then started to think about converting it into a 250g ply tank 96x24x24 since it has 3/8 glass. Is there enough of a safety factor here?

 

[wow_it_esploded]

It held up 24 inches of water before, so it should be able to now, especially because a plywood tank will be easier to brace.

I would suggest going deeper. Not top to bottom, but front to back. Some monsters require larger footprints and even without monsters a larger footprint tank is easier to aquascape.

Maybe 32 inches front to back? That would allow some monsters in there, and good enough space to work inside.

I with that glass, I would shoot for 96x24x32, this would be a great ray tank! Let me guess, flowerhorns?

With the dimensions I have given you would have about 320 gallons of water. I would do a standard plywood tank (with studs on the outside and rolled insulation+a plywood skin if you wanna save on heating) and coat with pond armour. For the corners and any joints I would use fiberglass cloth to help with strength and sealing.

Good luck with this tank, I am looking forward to how it turns out!

 

[danz]

This is actually going to go to a friends tattoo shop and will be an aro tank with possibly a mix of other fish and a flowerhorn of course!

I am thinking about studding the tank and insulation since there is no central air/heat and sheeting the inside with 3/4 ply. I am still debating about how to seal the tank since I need to keep the cost down. There are some cheap tanks on craigslist nowadays.

 

[danz]

Is it possible to build each panel separately and seal them then use a gasket of some type/silicone and bolt it together? I wont be able to build the tank at the shop and due to my limited building space would be easier to build each panel independently.

 

[wow_it_esploded]

It depends on what you use as sealing... Pond armour or any epoxy, no. Pond liner, yes!

Another method I would suggest is attaching the pond liner to each side, leaving a few inches overhang all around. When you put the tank together, the pond liner should seal the corners. To make sure the corners are sealed, you should use pond liner seaming tape. It is designed to seal 2 liners together to make a larger liner.

I have put together a small (4x4x4, inches) tank with this method and it held water until my sister yanked on the liner. With seaming tape this would never happen, but I had to use silicone because this was just a test of the method and I already had a case of it.

Any more questions?

 

[MurderedOut]

aro in a tattoo shop doesnt sound like a good idea, but i guess it depends on the aro/what kind and all that.

tattoo shops see a lot of different customers and when it gets busy, you cant watch everybody. it gets crowded a lot. and most aros are somewhat skiddish?

 

[danz]

This is a massive shop, 3 shops that have walls knocks down into 1. This will be on the retail side with clothing and in the art gallery so will be chill in this area. Thanks for all the great info, time to start investigating all my options with sealing, I was thinking about going with fiberglass since I want to do some rock work int he back.

I am leaning to pushing the measurements out to 96x24x30 and looking into the filtration. My father work fors a pipe company so will beable to get lots of crazy parts cheap so will have a 30% drain, and hot/cold water in for refill. Do you think a 60g sump is too small?