• You liked BFD7 now you should join this forum and of course become a club member to see what CCA is all about.
  • Thank you to everyone who registered and showed up for the BIG Fish Deal #7.

New Acrylic Tank

WendyFish

Members
At long last... we have set up our new tank!

The tank is a 125 gallon, 72" x 18" x 21" acrylic. It has a wood stand with magnet grasped acrylic panels on 3 sides. It is relatively high (40" high stand) because we wanted to use it in a bar area with a high top table and be eye level with the fish.

It is now stocking our demasoni colony with 15 or so adults, a lot of juvies (40-50 at a guess?); msobo group of 3M/7F, an albino peacock pair, and a bunch of syno lucipinnis. They seem pretty thrilled with their new accommodations.

This tank was made by Artfully Acrylic in Manassas, VA. We ordered it in late May, and Adam had it ready for us in about 6 weeks. He was a lot of fun to work with. We went to visit and design it, which you could well do over the internet, but it was fun seeing his workshop and all his in-progress projects. They were in the process of building a more than 8 foot tank to ship to Alaska! Our tank is made of half inch acrylic with the stand skinned in navy acrylic. Adam was happy to do the colored acrylic stand and ended up having to look all over the country to find navy acrylic for us - which was super great of him, I am so happy with the look.

We originally intended this tank for our kitchen, because we spend a lot of time there preparing meals and socializing. But we ended up putting it downstairs in our TV room because we spend a lot of time there too, and so it wanted some fish.

The light is from BuildMyLED.com, who were also really helpful. We contacted them for advice on color mix, and they were responsive and had good advice.

The overall project wasn't cheap, but because I am a woman, I can rationalize retail exceptionally well even when it isn't shoes; a tank this size is probably not going to be cheap, not really. A lot of used ones come cheap in cash but need serious refurb, and a new one of any sort is going to be expensive. A new glass one of this size is going to cost a lot of beer and pizza over its life; Ethan and I could move both tank and stand very comfortably on our own. Compared to other options, while it cost a bit more, the incremental cost of custom and acrylic was not as much as I would have thought.

Thanks for looking. I'd happily recommend Artfully Acrylic to anyone looking for a custom tank!

 

Andrewtfw

Global Moderators
That is a beautiful tank and set-up. What does the top look like? Did you include holes to run cords or a dry box?
 

ezrk

Members
That is a beautiful tank and set-up. What does the top look like? Did you include holes to run cords or a dry box?

There are four 1.5" (or so) holes two in each corner to run the canister tubing and power cords.

We have sumps on our other big tanks but have decided to not do that again. We are reasonably happy with the sumps and have them pretty quiet - BUT we find that sumps are not very fry friendly so opted for a canister solution.
 

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
Very nice guys! Congrats. :)

If you don't mind me asking, what are "magnet grasped acrylic panels?"
 

WendyFish

Members
Yeah, badly put. There are magnets screwed to the plywood and adhered to the acrylic, so the panels just clip on and off basically. Provides really easy maintenance access to the stuff underneath.
 

WendyFish

Members
One of our adventures with this, somehow in transport we managed to get somewhat serious 10 inch slices across the front of both the front panels. Ugh.

I spent a good amount of time buffing them out first with fine sandpaper then with the plastic polish kit from Novus. It was a lot of work, and doing it for the first time was REALLY distressing because it's your brand new tank and you basically have to sequentially damage it more to fix it... but at the end of it, you basically can't tell. Whew!

That said, new household rule is, you scratch it you buff it!
 

Ading522

Members
I spent a good amount of time buffing them out first with fine sandpaper then with the plastic polish kit from Novus. It was a lot of work, and doing it for the first time was REALLY distressing because it's your brand new tank and you basically have to sequentially damage it more to fix it..
That said, new household rule is, you scratch it you buff it!

i know EXACTLY how you guys feel.. lol.. called around for some help, and got some tips from Chris (rainforestexp) on this project..and quite happy with it.. :)
 

REG84

Members
WOW!! That is a very Beautful setup.. Wendy, can you talk to my wife? i would love to spend more money on fish and tanks then shoes and purses.. LOL
 
Top