[Ratpack]

Originally Posted by flgoose

Oh the wife! they just don't understand do they? I think it's because the like to move furniture often and a tank is pretty much permanent. I did away with mine so i don't have any problems with tank size or furniture arrangement.

anyway here is the sketch i supplied the glass company to get my bottom cut and drilled. Hope it helps.

I made my overflows out of 1/4" glass 4" deep x 9" wide to cover the holes. They gave me plenty room for the stand pipes and also for linear drainage.
Click to enlarge

Link does work so I can't read it.

If I buy a bigger tank and she doesn't buy into it, I too would get get of mine, but it would cost me way more than a tank cost.

[Ratpack]

Good news for me, I wil be allowed to buy the glass. So now I just need to draw up the layout and place the order next week. I may be picking your brain some more as I go through this.

[jle9123]

Also make sure to get the New lumin hex reflectors to make sure you maximize your light in the entire tank. I would always recommend single ended rather than double ended due to light tranfer and bulb color and par maintainning alot longer.

-Joseph

[flgoose]

Ratpack: I need to figure out what i did before for the pictures to work out right, for some reason they won't. Anyway basically i had the holes places 3" from the back edge and the first hole 12" from the side edge on either side and 6" in between the two holes. That gave me a 9" x 4" overflow on each side. As you can see from the stendpipe/overflow picture, There wasn't a whole lot of wasted spage in the overflow chamber. BTW, go ahead and pick my brain, that is why we're all here for, share the knowledge gained.

Joseph: "Also make sure to get the New lumin hex reflectors to make sure you maximize your light in the entire tank. I would always recommend single ended rather than double ended due to light tranfer and bulb color and par maintainning alot longer."

Thanks for the input on the lighting, i'll have to check that one out. So far i was suggested to use 3 250 halides and a couple of T5's to makimixe the lighting across this big tank from the reef geeks site. They're price for the halides alone 954.00 Nice to have a big tank but getting it outfitted is quite expensive. any suggestion and or links on the lighting subject would be greatly appriciated.

[jle9123]

Hellolights.com is a great site that has the old school Large Luminac in a combo package for the same price. I would suggest Reeflux 12K as your bulb and single ended all the way order separatly bc all the bulb they offer is okay.

[Ratpack]

Oh well, back to the drawing board for me. The glass came back at a much higher price than what I was originally told so I guess I will be buying a premade tank instead of the DIY.

[flgoose]

Sorry to hear you couldn't get the glass at that increadible price.

My criteria for building a DIY tank is as follow:
The tank size has to be huge and it must be cheaper than buying one already made.
OR tank size and/or shape would have to be unusual and can't be bought off the shelf (custom made are expensive)
OR you got the glass either free or really cheap.

Other than that, it wouldn't be cost effective building a standard size tank as most premade tanks are priced relatively cheap and making one wouldn't save much. In my case i got most of my glass for free so it was worth it.

If and when you buy your tank you can always count on saving money DIY sump, refugiums and skimmer. I made my sump out of 1/4" mirror i bought at trifth shop for 10 bucks and i'm working on making the skimmer with similar material. I do like to make everything out of glass. Mirrors are not tempered so i can easily cut it and stripping the mirror part it's easy.

[Ratpack]

Yeah, I at least thought about the DIY sump, even had the glass cutters here at work to cut some pieces of 5mm that Iwas going to use to make the sump. But when the tank glass fell through, I decided to buy a small tank to make the sump out of. The reason is, I had to spend $85 on the clamps and silicone and stuff to make the tank, so I can return that and use it for a sump tank. I can cut all the dividers and such here at work for free and partition it the way I want. Plus, I am about a year or so from upgrading. I just started my small reef about 2 months ago so I will use it to learn from until the time is right to get a new tank. I may, however, use that time to start building / buying the things I need to run the bigger tank and that way my investment is laid out over a longer period of time. Thanks for all your help and I will still be watching this thread and others to learn all I can. Can't wait to see that tank of yours with stuff in it. Who knows, by waiting, I may end up with a tank that size as well.