Reef Rhythms: 750 Gallons of Biological Fun!

[Sltloser]

Then it was onto the hardest part of the build....fiberglass. It's not that it's inherently hard, but it takes a lot of time, the resin is messy to work with, and it stinks like no other. O, and you don't want to mess this part up. To take care of the smell I used a few “grow” fans with ducting to a small window to vent all the fumes as the resin cured.

This was the first iteration.....but like a dork I didn't account for this type of ducting to not be completely air tight. Needless to say, the house was VERY smelly until I figured it out haha.

I then used thicker plastic wrapping and tenting poles to tent off the entire space instead of just around the tank. I moved the fans closer to the window to more easily move around the space and work on the tank, in the long run this was much a much more effective way to work on the tank.

And just a small opening to for me to move in and out and allow fresh airflow.

One of my main goals was to minimize prep time between layers, this would require me to have as many materials ready to go upfront as possible. The easiest thing to prep are all the pieces of fiberglass that I would need. Fiberglass is incredibly messy even before you start adding resin to the mix, the fibers fall of extremely easily and get EVERYWHERE. I needed a creative solution to do this quickly/easily so I decided to create a rudimentary fiberglass dispenser next to the tank which would allow me to pull the fiberglass to the correct length then cut with fabric scissors.

I ended up using the “slots” in the stand to store each of the pieces. I labelled them for quick/easy identification which made moving through each layer much easier.

Once I had everything cut up and stored appropriately I started on my fiberglassing adventure!

There isn’t really anything incredibly exciting about each layer of fiberglass, it just starts to look darker and darker as each layer goes on. Overall I ended up with 6 layers of fiberglass on all flat surfaces and 8+ layers on the seams. Some of the pieces that were meant for flat surfaces ended up being longer than I intended so I just wrapped them into the corners causing some of the corner layers to be more than the 6 layers I intentionally put on them.

In the end I had about 3/16” of fiberglass on the flat surfaces and probably 3/8” on the corner seams.

 

[judgejimmy]

Wooo! Exciting stuff going on here. I have so many questions, but I'm waiting for you to do more work because I'm sure they'll get answered along the way.

 

[Sltloser]

Wooo! Exciting stuff going on here. I have so many questions, but I'm waiting for you to do more work because I'm sure they'll get answered along the way.

I'm always happy to answer questions!

 

[Sltloser]

And then THERE WAS GLASS! I made the decision to copy AlexG and get a 3/4" piece of annealed (non-tempered) glass. I opted for low iron glass with beveled edges so I didn't mangle myself during the install haha.

I have to give a huge shoutout to Joe and team at Glass Cages. They were professional and extremely easy to work with when getting quotes and having the panel ordered! They palletized and packed the glass extremely well, it arrived without a single blemish on it .

Dimensions of the panel are: 115 1/4" x 34". I left ~1" of clearance on all sides (top/sides/bottom) for the glass install. I decided that I would raise the glass off the bottom of the tank due to the imperfections in the bottom of the tank. I thought I could use 1" pieces of acrylic to raise the glass up before attaching it to the front panel bracing.

For the glass install I pondered a few different ways to attach the glass to the aquarium. A lot of people seem to just put silicone right on the glass and then push it up against the framing and call it good. It seems to work well, but I saw someone who built a giant concrete aquarium in their house use an injection silicone method. I watched their video and was able to chat with them a bit and I felt like that was the best way to seal the water in. Using this method would allow me to put spacers between the tank and the glass and then inject silicone into the space between creating a thick bead of continuous silicone for the glass to adhere to.

I had never done this before so I did a test run first with different spacer sizes to see what worked best. I created a quick jig out of some left over wood I had laying around and a few pieces of glass. I used a single piece of plywood for the bottom, then screwed down a few pieces that would act as the "front brace" and ensured that the silicone bead was the same size as what I'd have in the big tank (2"). After that I connected a piece of 3/4" plywood to the back side of the brace so that the glass was sitting at the correct height. I started with 1/4" spacer and a 1/2" spacer, both made from acrylic.

"Front" (clamps were there to hold each piece of glass in place)

Back

1/2" spacer (a couple of bubbles present)

1/4" spacer (no bubbles that I could find)

In the end I found that this process was extremely easy and allowed me to create a solid bead of silicone making me feel VERY good about getting the glass installed.

A few notes for anyone who wants to try this at home:
1. Buy an automatic caulking gun, it's a life saver.
2. 1/4" spacer works, but quite a bit of back pressure builds up as the silicone tries to push its way to the bottom. I suggest using the caulking gun on the lowest setting possible. To limit silicone loss, it might be wise to create a guide for the silicone tip to ride in that extends 2" on either side to force the silicone in the space instead of pooling outside of it.
3. Make sure you cut your tube to almost the size of the space you intend to fill. I didn't do this originally on the 1/2" spacer and I think that is what caused the air bubbles to form. If you can cut the tip of the tube so it only goes in about 1/4" of the total space you intend to fill it'll let you push more silicone into the space at a time and seems to limit bubble formation.
4. Slow and steady wins the race.

 

[Sltloser]

Before I moved onto coating the inside with pond armor I attached the final top brace to the aquarium. I used the rest of my 3/8" x 4" structural screws and wood glue for this.

This top brace is attach to the side walls (held in place with a single screw currently), which will then have another piece across them attaching them to the back wall. This is similar to a top plate when framing walls for a house. The thought process when doing this was to have them all locked together so that pulling in each direction would keep the walls straight and the tank from causing any bowing in walls and extra deflection if it occurs.

Coating the fiberglass in Pond Armor was the next step. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go with black or blue, but in the end I decided to keep it more "natural" and go with their competition blue.

There isn't a whole lot of interesting pictures to add of apply pond armor. I went by their instructions and used a small amount of alcohol to reduce the viscosity of the pond armor so I could apply it using a roller. I found a 6" roller with a 1/4" nap that worked really well!

 

[Reefer_Marc]

Wow this looks amazing! Cant wait to see more of your journey and the experience and knowledge you get!

 

[Sltloser]

Getting the glass downstairs was quite the treat. I originally had 5-6 people lined up to help, but after 2 people bailed we were left with 4. Luckily one of them was a former D1 football linebacker, so the 4 of us were able to muscle it downstairs. I was too anxious to take pictures of that entire process, unfortunately I just have the final pictures. But I'll do my best to explain how we got the glass into the tank below.

It took a while for me to figure out how to get the glass into the tank with how low the ceiling clearance is. In the end I decided that getting the tank off of the stand, putting the glass into the tank, and lifting it back on the stand was going to be almost impossible. I don't have a scissor lift or anything that I could slide the tank onto to move it closer to the floor, so I came up with a different idea. I cut 2x4s at an angle and attached them to the stand to create a ramp that I could slide the tank down to get it to the floor.

Once the front edge touched the floor we were able to rotate the tank onto it's face (viewing panel framing face down). We were then able to use suction cups to lift the glass and slide it into the tank. After that we added the wooden braces you see in the picture above to stop the glass from moving around, and re-rotated the tank onto the ramp and pushed it right back up onto the stand. Getting the tank on and off was a lot easier than I thought it would be, which was a relief after getting the glass downstairs without any major issues.

Once it was on the stand, the magnitude of the tank started to really settle in. I'm not sure why the glass made such a big difference, but it felt like a huge tank haha.

Then, of course, I had to get the glass taped off for silicone!

 

[Sltloser]

Before starting to inject the silicone I super glued in spaces for the glass to rest against. One little hickup I ran into during this was that the corner ended up much thicker than the flat surfaces after fiberglassing.

My original idea was to put in 1/4" spacers in the corners and then add in 3/8" spacers on the front and that should have let the glass sit correctly. Well that didn't play out quite as well as I thought. I ended up adding a 1/16" layer onto the 3/8" layer and then it was too thick for good contact amongst all the spacers. I ended up ensuring that the glass was tight to the larger spacers and called it good.

I followed AlexGs lead and decided to use ASI silicone, I decided to purchase black silicone (this will be important later). I used the length 1 tube got me during testing to try and extrapolate how much silicone I needed with an additional 20% buffer. My estimations should have put me at about 35 tubes. Instead of ordering a single tube at a time I found a place online I could order an entire case (24 tubes) and saved me ~$3/tube, I ended up ordering 2 cases to ensure I had enough.

Having an electric caulking gun was worth every penny. I had a fish buddy of mine come over to help with this, he sat in the tank on a 5 gallon bucket to observe the silicone injection and make sure that I moved at the correct pace to fill the entire space. The pictures below were during/right after injecting the silicone.

I thought black silicone would be easiest to tell if there were any air gaps or unfilled space. Unfortunately I'm not sure if that ended up being true.....after about 2 weeks of cure time I found this .

This picture is the same corner of the tank as the picture above. Caulking tubes like to "burp" sometimes, and while I noticed this happen a few time with different tubes I always tried to stay in that place to ensure that I back filled the space the "burp" left open. It appears that didn't happen here. My hypothesis is that the burp caused this pocked to form, but because the silicone is black it covered the glass and we didn't see the gap that occurred. I think we would have seen it with clear silicone, but I can't be 100% sure.

I felt pretty bad about this initially, but I reached out to @dca22anderson and came up with a plan to ensure this wasn't an issue. You can see that I re-enforced the seams on the right side between the tank and the lass. That bead/excess is about 3/4" and there seemed to be ~1/2" of silicone between the edge of the glass and the start of the gap. The plan was to use a large gauge needle to inject silicone into that space. Although silicone doesn't bond well to itself filling that air pocked would remove any weak points that the water could use to push through the bead on the inside.

It was tough to find a needle large enough without having to buy a set of needles and syringes on amazon. Luckily I found a flavor injector at the grocery store. I cut the tip off the needle at the shallowest hole so the silicone was not impeded when injecting it. I then filled the applicator ensuring that I didn't allow any air into the chamber that would push into the gap I was attempting to fill. I pierced the silicone from the "dry side" or the viewing side of the tank and had someone inside to watch as I filled the gap.

I also decided that along with injecting the silicone I would further reinforce the seams by filling all the space between the side of the tank and the glass.

 

[McPuff]

Wow that is great work so far! What will you use to coat the outside of the tank? I built a sump a few years ago and just ended up painting the outside with pond armor as well... but it was a much smaller tank (~80 gal).

 

[dca22anderson]

This looks amazing!! Great job!!

 

[Sltloser]

Wow that is great work so far! What will you use to coat the outside of the tank? I built a sump a few years ago and just ended up painting the outside with pond armor as well... but it was a much smaller tank (~80 gal).

I ended up following what @mehaffydr did and painted it with a few coats of decent exterior paint. But I have/will coat all the surfaces that are more drip prone (top rim of the tank) with pond armor and fill any gaps with silicone to ensure that I don't get any water intrusion into the wood!

This looks amazing!! Great job!!

Thanks! I appreciate all the help and guidance you were willing to provide with it

 

[Sltloser]

Continuing to truck forward!
1. RO system set up.
2. RO/water change tank plumbed.
3. Drilled aquarium for bulk heads and pond armored it.
4. Drilled the overflow box and added another layer of pond armor.

The RO system finally got here, so I was able to install that and started making water!

I decided to use the waste water from this for a few different things.
1. Wash sand that I got from a few tank tear downs to get ready for the tank.
2. Fill up the containers I have dry rock in to try out bleach curing of the rocks.

I plumbed the water reservoir tank so that I could move water from there to the tank easily.

I got a used syncra a few months back for a good price that I can use!

Drilling the tank went well, I used a laser level to ensure each bulkhead was exact.

Taping the cut site is key for a clean cut!

Pulling this plug made me feel even more confident with the structural integrity of the tank. You can see that it is entirely one piece and everything has been completed laminated together without any bubbles or voids.

I used the same method from the tank to drill the overflow box for bulk heads. I then mixed up some pond armor to waterproof the holes in the overflow and on the tank.

 

[iReefer12]

Amazing work @Sltloser. Plywood tanks freak me out a bit, but you have done an incredible job.

 

[Sltloser]

Amazing work @Sltloser. Plywood tanks freak me out a bit, but you have done an incredible job.

They freak me out too, I think I'm just crazy enough to give it a go haha.

I do feel a lot better about it now than I did during the process to be honest. Would be happy to have you come down and check it out if you're interested. I'm just south of Denver near Littleton .

 

[Sltloser]

I got the second sump and also made a few stands to make them more accessible!

Also.......

We have water!

 

[iReefer12]

They freak me out too, I think I'm just crazy enough to give it a go haha.

I do feel a lot better about it now than I did during the process to be honest. Would be happy to have you come down and check it out if you're interested. I'm just south of Denver near Littleton .

Would love to come check it out. Likewise, you’re welcome to come check mine out whenever. I’m up in Broomfield

 

[Gill the 3rd]

following along! That tank looks great. Im actually going to be doing the exact same thing next summer, building a 8x3x3 plywood tank in my basement. This is great information to follow along. I may have missed it, but what dimensions are your tank?

 

[Sltloser]

following along! That tank looks great. Im actually going to be doing the exact same thing next summer, building a 8x3x3 plywood tank in my basement. This is great information to follow along. I may have missed it, but what dimensions are your tank?

That's exciting, I look forward to seeing your build!

The dimensions are 10' x 4' x 3'

 

[Sltloser]

I continued to move forward towards getting this thing ready for fish!

1. Added the top plate to aquarium walls to secure all sides together.
2. Added blocking on the walls around the tank and painted them.
3. Completed pond armor of tank and overflow box.
4. Painted the sump stands and plugged holes
5. Overflow box created in SketchUp and sent out for manufacturing.
6. Continued filling the tank.

Added this top plate to the sides of the aquarium to tie together front/back/sides.

Installed the blocking with the intention of putting it lower where pressure from the tank would be greatest to help minimize deflection.

I also patched the screw shiners by gluing a piece directly to the aquarium and then enforcing it with the 2x4 blocking.

Finished the overflow box pond armor and also did the front top brace.

Painted the sump stands and got the new one plumbed for an easy drain and to plug the other openings.

The tank has been slowly filling, I was out of town all last week so I didn't get to fill the tank at all unfortunately. It's been running the past 2 days and is about 8" from the bottom of the bulkheads

Also added leak detectors to each corner for peace of mind.

 

[Sltloser]

Started to work on getting the fish room framed out!