please help me decide

[fishbee]

hi all
i'm back into the hobby after a long 4 month pause lol.

i will very soon build my first plywood tank, now the problem is i'm working on a very limited budget. which method do you guys think to be cheaper and easier for me to waterproof the tank
1 pond liner
2 some sort of pond guard epoxy
3 fiberglass lining
the tank will roughly be about 700-750g and will have a viewing window made from 8x2.5ft glass

so please help me to minimise my cost, otherwise i will have a nice big tank with no fish in it coz i spent all me money on the tank

 

[CJH]

which method do you guys think to be cheaper and easier for me to waterproof the tank
1 pond liner
2 some sort of pond guard epoxy
3 fiberglass lining
the tank will roughly be about 700-750g and will have a viewing window made from 8x2.5ft glass

Wanting both cheaper AND easier can be a tall order and of course you'll need to research prices in Australia. But with that said, I have heard of people finding good prices on pond liner and of course a few people have managed to combine then with a viewing window. Viewing window may have been acrylic which might bump the cost up.

To keep cost down and simplicity up you'll wan to design the tank in a way that minimizes or eliminates the need for fiberglass cloth, mat or roving. The fiberglass itself is expensive but also requires more resin and makes the sealing process more complex.

If pond liner does not work out look into vinyl ester resin. I forget the guy's username but one poster here built some absolutely giant plywood tanks sealed with vinyl ester resin applied directly to the plywood walls. The only cloth that was used was over the seams. I don't think you could do this with standard polyester resin.

Australia is a surfing mecca. See if you can find a cheap source of surfboard epoxy resin.

Also check and see if the liquid rubber liners are available in your country. There have been a couple of threads about these recently.

Lastly, carefully research glass cost vs. tank height. I can't remember the threshold where a tank gets tall enough that the glass cost at the required thickness starts to go up exponentially, but I think it was around 30". Again, you'll have to research this based on prices available to you in your part of the world.