# Acrylic nano tank build



## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Ok,
It's not that I am bored, or that we need another project, but we finally decided to take a shot at building a tank.
I have a tiny 5 gallon tank in my studio that was in need up an upgrade. It's been making me crazy for a while cause it's impossible to clean properly.

The plan is to build a tank to fit a specific space in my shop on a shelf. It will be an L shaped tank, about 20 gallons. All in one.

This tank will hold my nano fish (really nano) including eviotas, trimmas, bryaninops natans, some 1" blennies and some 2" pipefish. Plus bumblebee shrimp, sexy shrimp, maybe some Lima shrimp, emperor shrimp and other cool tiny inverts. I can house about 25 fish in my 5 gallon, so this is going to be a serious fish fest! It will also be home to sponges, some gorgs and tunicates (if I can find more). So low lighting.

John used to work at the science centre in the workshop, so he has built some acrylic stuff, but that was a long time ago and it was not intended for water.

Reef central has a couple long involved posts about working with acrylic. I started there several months ago and filtered out the bs to find the basic starting point.

Step 1, access some cell cast good quality 1/2" acrylic. (Yes I know this is overkill, more on that later). Best price was Sabic Industries. We had intended them to rough cut it down for us, but of course this was last minute pick up and so the sheet went on the roof rack sandwiched between 2 layers of plywood.



That's the car it came home on, plus our outdoor shop set up, including the required beer.....


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

The basic sketch of the tank with the cutting list. First step was to buck the pieces down to manageable sizes to bring into the shop.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

John's tools, so he cuts. Festool straight edge and skill saw. Yes, he has toys.......


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Something to know about us. We build stuff. Lots of stuff. So we may not know about acrylic, but it doesn't mean we can't do it. It also means we butt heads a lot.

This is the musical interlude while we 'discuss' how to move on to the next step. (Insert appropriate meme here)










That took 8 days......on to the next step.....


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Spent a few days doing test cuts on shaper, router, glue test some joints and read up more on gluing acrylic. Well, I didn't. I got bored and did other stuff.

Best resource on line for working with plexiglas.
http://www.plexiglas.com/export/sit...s/sheet-docs/plexiglas-fabrication-manual.pdf

Best reef central thread for building tanks...
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1056956


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Back to building.
Pieces cut out, in the shop, ready to square up and cut to size.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

We are using Weld On 40 for most of the joints. So they are being cut on a bevel. This is the router jig with shims to create the angle.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

You maka da mess, you do the clean up. What? Do I look like the maid?










Crocs make good shop shoes......but they don't leave the house! Btw, in case you're wondering. John builds guitars. Those are numbered back and side sets on the shelves behind. Small shop. Multi purpose.


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## Mikeylikes (Nov 22, 2013)

So exciting. Good luck on the build. Make sure to post some pics after its done. 

Felt like yesterday when Paul and I ventured on our builds ... 


Mikey


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## Dis (Apr 16, 2010)

Ya goodluck. Really surprised your using 1/2" acrylic. A sheet of that is not cheap. Where did you get it? Goodluck with the rest of the tank


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## explor3r (Mar 14, 2010)

Another tank.......congrats!!!!!! I think is better if Jhon show us some of his guitars..just saying


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Dis said:


> Really surprised your using 1/2" acrylic. A sheet of that is not cheap. Where did you get it?


The acrylic came from Sabic Industries. We had price checked a few places and cell cast 1/2" sheet was anywhere between 330.00 and 380.00 for a 4 x 8 sheet.

There has been a cold water tank planned for over a year and we have been making do for our cold water qt tank with a regular glass tank, which has to get replaced. The cold water tank will be 1" acrylic as it is a good insulator. So we decided to start with 1/2" for this little tank so we could get a handle on working with the Weld On 40 and larger joints. I am glad we did. It is a learning curve, but we will get there.

I will post more as we go.


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## Dis (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks for the info. So it's not as easy as the "the King of DIY" makes it out to be? 

Nice for you to have someone work with


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## Flexin5 (Nov 12, 2011)

nice! and nice vdub too, golf R?


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

I know there has been a bit of a gap in this post, which is a result of getting side tracked on another project. Never the less, we are still building the tank.
We decided to do all the joints as bevel joints, about a 5 degree angle. To make this bevel, all edges are cut on a router.










Actually, the photo is of a straight cut, but pretty much the same set up. Just put a fence on the other side of the bit and use the slope.
I don't like routers, they grab material. John does this part cause he is incredibly OCD about clean straight cuts. Seriously over the top, which is good. Sometimes.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Glue joint squared up, clamped, ready for glueing. The two pieces of acrylic have been masked off close to the edges, clamped square, and are not touching. They are separated by about .5 mm which allows the glue to seep right through the joint and not create a dry edge.
I write lots of notes on the paper face so we can keep track of sizes and where the piece belongs.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

To this point, I am sure it looks like John is doing everything. And yes, he does use the big tools. They're his tools and he uses them everyday, I am not on them enough to feel comfortable. My job was layout, sizing, design, R and D and gluing.

Our set up included vapour masks for fumes and syringes for epoxy to get it into the joints. We had done several test joints, this was our first attempt at a real joint.

It was a f***ing disaster...........










As was our second attempt.
We learned two important things. 
1. WD-40 has an open time of about 20 minutes. For the first 10 minutes there is too much air in the mix to use it, and if we tried, all we got was air bubbles everywhere. Wait 10 minutes and most of the air bubbles are gone, which leaves an open time of 10 minutes.
2. We were mixing up a ratio of 20ml to 1ml of hardener. Trying to mix up less is impossible because if you miss on the ratio by .1 the material kicks too quickly and your open time is reduced to seconds, instead of minutes.

Let's just say we had both those issues on our first attempts and we bailed on the joints. Opened them up, cleaned them off and let the residue harden up.
Then went for a beer.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)




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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

After a quick regroup, discussion on what went wrong, and plans for how to avoid future disasters, we went back at it.
This is the result of our next attempt. The photo is a shot from under the glue joint looking up, just after it's done.
It's a thing of beauty. The joint is crystal clear, bubble free and completely bonded. Yeah!










That line that looks like a gap in the glue joint is an acrylic streamer hair hanging down. Trust me, the joint was perfect.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

At this point we were pretty relieved. We hadn't been sure how the whole process would go or how good we could get the joints. We could be posting a complete disaster about how not to build an acrylic tank.
Which I suppose could still happen. However, first hurdle passed, we know how to make good glue joints.
Time for a beer.
Glue joint setting up. We left them for 24 hours to harden and at least 72 hours before working on them or cleaning up.


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