Hello everyone! my name is Derek. i'm a relatively new member that has been inspired to get into monster fish keeping from this awesome site. i stumbled on here one day and have been hooked every since. Through lots of persuasion i talked my pops into letting me get an aquarium. at first i was going to just buy one and use some old desk for a stand but then thought: lets take this up a notch and try build my own. did lots of research through the web and here decided to go for it. I called up a local glass shop and got a quote for several panes of glass dimensions. Largest I could talk my dad into was a 30 gallon aquarium. I was quoted for 145 bucks for the 5 pieces of glass! I could get a pre built one for 45 bucks at the LFS! I almost just gave up because didnt want to spend a ridiculous amount of money for it. I rethought about it decided screw it, its time to personalize this! I will get to say Ive built my own aquarium from scratch. I called up another glass shop and was quoted 100 bucks. A much better deal from the other places I called. So I went for it. Ordered my dimensions and picked them up a few days later! The next weekend I bought some silicon GE I, the recommended kind from a few MFK members, and put together the aquarium.
oh man was the silicon strong and potent! i know i probably over did the silicon amount, but i didnt want to take any chances not getting any leaks. If in the future i'm able to build another aquarium i know i'll do a much better and cleaner job. (if i do, i'll definitely be making it bigger!)
hooray, all patched up! i let it sit a few days and then took it outside and filled it up with water. i let that sit for a day and a half to see if there were any leaks - there were none! yay!
now to build a stand! i have almost no woodworking experience (took woodshop in junior high!) so i looked at a bunch of DIY stands from various MFK members then pitched a few schematics to my dad and asked for his help for construction since hes awesome at DIY wood work stuff. (hes got tons of saws/power tools/wood) He didn't like my schematics and then we started brainstorming something that would look much nicer. he had a bunch of really nice looking maple wood that he was going to use for a big dresser that he never got around to starting. so we came up with a nice design and mapped out every dimension specs for every piece of wood cut and got to work!
over the course of probably a couple weeks, when we both had time (we're both really busy with school and work) we got to this point:
this is one of the doors that it will have(backside). i'm planning to put custom stained glass on it. my dad did the more hard intricate cuts of the different wood pieces. he used the table saw to cut some of the edge to have hinges so they would lock together like a puzzle piece, making it much more strong and sturdy.
heres what it will look like with one of the doors
my original plan with just using a wood top surface has changed. my dad got a sweet hook up with a slab of granite for cheap. hes got a friend who does granite/marble tabletops and he gave us a slab for 20 bucks. i'll post pictures of it soon.
this week i'm going to be hand sanding to get rid of any excess woodglue drips/smears and to prep it for staining. i'm going to go for a dark wood stain. more pictures soon!
oh man was the silicon strong and potent! i know i probably over did the silicon amount, but i didnt want to take any chances not getting any leaks. If in the future i'm able to build another aquarium i know i'll do a much better and cleaner job. (if i do, i'll definitely be making it bigger!)
hooray, all patched up! i let it sit a few days and then took it outside and filled it up with water. i let that sit for a day and a half to see if there were any leaks - there were none! yay!
now to build a stand! i have almost no woodworking experience (took woodshop in junior high!) so i looked at a bunch of DIY stands from various MFK members then pitched a few schematics to my dad and asked for his help for construction since hes awesome at DIY wood work stuff. (hes got tons of saws/power tools/wood) He didn't like my schematics and then we started brainstorming something that would look much nicer. he had a bunch of really nice looking maple wood that he was going to use for a big dresser that he never got around to starting. so we came up with a nice design and mapped out every dimension specs for every piece of wood cut and got to work!
over the course of probably a couple weeks, when we both had time (we're both really busy with school and work) we got to this point:
this is one of the doors that it will have(backside). i'm planning to put custom stained glass on it. my dad did the more hard intricate cuts of the different wood pieces. he used the table saw to cut some of the edge to have hinges so they would lock together like a puzzle piece, making it much more strong and sturdy.
heres what it will look like with one of the doors
my original plan with just using a wood top surface has changed. my dad got a sweet hook up with a slab of granite for cheap. hes got a friend who does granite/marble tabletops and he gave us a slab for 20 bucks. i'll post pictures of it soon.
this week i'm going to be hand sanding to get rid of any excess woodglue drips/smears and to prep it for staining. i'm going to go for a dark wood stain. more pictures soon!
