I am planning out a frag tank and I am curious which will be cheaper to do. I want to use acrylic as I have never had one before and would like to try it out. My question however is, which is cheaper? To buy a custom made one or build my own?
Cheaper to build or buy?
- Thread starter BigRed
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It is always cheaper to build your own. Although the quality may not be as good depending on you skillz!
bmac16
Active Member
do you have a router? ....you are going to need to finish the edges of the acrylic if not the tank will not have a very strong bond
edit: btw what is the size of the tank you are wanting? ...table saws arent that expensive, try to find a used one around your area. even brand new decent ones only run 200-300. you will probably pay that in just your acrylic if not more
edit: btw what is the size of the tank you are wanting? ...table saws arent that expensive, try to find a used one around your area. even brand new decent ones only run 200-300. you will probably pay that in just your acrylic if not more
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ReeferBen
Active Member
When I built my sump I used a table saw and sanded the edges to get a smooth finished edge before gluing. If you haven't worked with acrylic before Id look at myreefcreations acrylic tanks. Building one with no bubbles in the seams can be tough, and being a display I would think you would rather spend a little more to get it right.
I would love to see the pics of the 20 long when you get it done. I really want to redo mine but am not sure what to do with it.
Yeah I will def. post some pics when I am done with the build... it is taking a little longer than I would have liked simply due to my long vacation I just got back from... I hope to get most all of it done by tomorrow evening. So far it looks extremely clean and is more than worthy of being turned into a small display tank in the future.
20L will fill up fast man, trust me on that 
haha
haha
I know how much everyone loves crappy little paint drawings but here is what I had originally planned on the left and what I was thinking about doing on the right... the black circle is supposed to represent a bag of carbon, the brown is live rock, the green is chaeto, and the small rectangular piece in the pic on the right is filter floss. Please provide me your input!
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Lol yep you know it... he has to be one of thee funniest people I have ever seen on tv and I am glad someone realized who it was
The obvious premise behind the additional chamber is to add some forced filtration rather than simply passive filtration. Since this tank is going to be skimmerless I figure the more filtration the better off I will be.
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Ian
Valuable Member
Lol yep you know it... he has to be one of thee funniest people I have ever seen on tv and I am glad someone realized who it was
No matter what they paid, they could never find someone better than him :xd:
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