My own DIY

[hazler]

Sorry to bring you in like this lol, no tank started yet. Simply brainstorming at this stage.
I plan on building a big tank, big compared to the average hobbyist, small compared to some of the tanks on here.

The tank will be stocked mostly with Australian natives. For those of you who know Aussie natives will know that some can get big and mean. Particularly the Murray Cod.
In the wild they commonly reach 3 - 4 feet. And a 5 - 6 foot cod is not unheard of. Beautiful fish but when they get this big after a few years they become pretty territorial. And are naturally aggressive after a few months. Isn't scaring me off cause I want one. And I can work with it having other fish in the tank. But I can expect the fish to reach at least 600mm.

So that being said, I am thinking a plywood tank.
12ft long
3-4ft deep
3-4ft high

I'm not sure on filtration, heating, chilling yet. I want the tank to be about 23 degree celcius.
I want the tank to do its own water changes too. Just don't know what way to go about it just yet, so open to ideas, been flicking through the pages for like a year lol. Getting closer to doing one myself so I wanna get things organised. Anybody know what kind of weight a tank of this size would be?

As I said open to ideas lol

 

[tomomothy]

Using the calculator at the top of this page, and using 12x3x3 dimentionsl your tank would be 800g. Water weighs 8lbs per gallon, so assuming it was perfectly full, the water alone would way 6400lbs (or 2900kg). Thats ignoring sand/gravel, the tank itself, stand, lid, filtration etc. There are a few threads on here with DIY auto water changes but I think the search feature is down. You can find them in the DIY section though. A lot of guys have a drip system that constantly fills the tank at a calulated rate, then you can have a passive overflow to a drain to empty the tank, and you can use a dosing pump for dechlorinator if you have chorines or chloramines in your water

 

[hazler]

Appreciate your reply. So I'd be looking at a fair bit of weight then. I have looked through those on many occasions. Astonished by some of the things people come up with. I'll have to have a big look at exactly what I want to do then. Will definitely have a dechlorinator. When I get started on it ill just use this thread to keep people updated

 

[KAWAMIKIE]

You should consider 10-12 lbs per gallon as your weight of the finished tank and then add more weight for the filtration system.
You also have to consider over head clearance for performing tank maintenance when deciding on tank depth and stand height.