First Tank Build

[foundnemo]

Hello Everyone, I am looking to build my first aquarium out of acrylic (60x24x20). Any suggestions? Thickness of Acrylic? Any particular brand, if any? Best glue to use? Thanks everyone in advance!

 

[Ron Reefman]

Hello to Detroit. I was born and raised there! My job transferred me away when I was 30 years old.

Building a tank is a serious project. You'll want to watch a lot of You Tube videos and hopefully you'll get some help here. I'd help, but all the tanks I've made have been glass rimless tanks.

The 60" long dimension is pretty big. You'll want very thick acrylic (probably 1" at least). Do you plan to do a euro brace around the top? And I don't mean to be insulting, but do you know what a euro brace is? Most acrylic tanks and a few glass tanks have them.

That's so close to a standard size tank, why do you want to build it rather than buy one?

 

[bstodds15]

Hello Everyone, I am looking to build my first aquarium out of acrylic (60x24x20). Any suggestions? Thickness of Acrylic? Any particular brand, if any? Best glue to use? Thanks everyone in advance!

You should check out King of DIY on youtube. Joey, the guy who runs it, has dozens of videos about building tanks out of both glass and acrylic.

 

[foundnemo]

Thank you everyone for your feedback. Honestly, this is more of a father son project then anything else. My dad recently retired and I thought this would be a great project for us to bond over! He was the main reason I got into the hobby. I will surf YouTube for the DIY king

 

[its.jojo]

I'd recommend a euro brace regardless of thickness. I currently have a rimless 1" thick tank 24X36X16tall. It bows out on the 36" side by 1/2". I've recently begun constructing a new system that will be eurobraced and moving down in thickness to 1/2 thickness.