[morrissey]

Hello all, need your help



I am designing and building an acrylic aquarium. I need to know how large the top (two) openings should be cut (to allow for addition of fish, rock, etc while maximizing the tank integrity, reducing bowing, etc.) Material ½ “ nominal acrylic throughout, tank dimensions 48” long, 18.125” wide (front to back), 30” tall (not counting ½ “ floor) roughly 112 gallons. (Planning on having a 6” DSB but I have fairly long arms) I plan on using a router for the cuts, with 1.25” radius corners in the cuts to reduce points of stress in the top.



How wide should the lip be around the outside of the tank and how wide should the single center brace be? (I plan on implementing 36" trough inside the tank for the spillway and drilling the tank at the top back for both input and output. 36” long spillway will be made of ¼” acrylic since it presumably will experience little pressure.)

thanks

moz

[MyLittleOcean]

All sounds OK.

For the cutouts 2" for edging and 2" for the brace will be fine.

Hove you ever worked with acrylic before?

With a heat strip ($25) you could get an 8' x 30" piece of acrylic and have bent corners on the front. This would also decrease the seams to be glued.

[wanareef]

With 1/2" all around, you could go to Euro bracing. This is where you just have a "border" of acrylic that is about 2-3" wide all around the top parmiter. If you can double it to 1" you'll be ok, a littl over kill thought

[lakersfan0014]

Well In my honest opinion you don't want to build that size tank out of 1/2" acrylic, there would be too much bowing. I would build it out of 3/4" acrylic with a 2-3 inch perimeter brace and a 3-4 inch center brace. 30" tall is quite high for 1/2" and would be pushing it. If you wanted to go Eurobraced then go with at leat 1" possibly more with a 4-5 inch perimeter brace, I built a 48x24x24 eurobraced out of 3/4" with a 5 inch perimeter brace and it worked out awesome. Hope this helps.

-Randy