My 185gal build in progress (lots of pics)

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cvermeulen

Sucking up knowledge
May 18, 2007
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Hi guys, I just joined this forum, but I've been doing a bunch of reading here. Great site! I'm sucking up knowledge at an exponential rate!

Right now I'm in the middle of building a 180ish gallon plywood tank, based (very) loosely on some of the online plans. I've seen som pretty nasty looking DIY plywood efforts, and this has to be a centerpiece in my house, so I'm taking a bit more time on it than I've seen.

Don't know what I want to put in it yet... I want it to be a pretty tank, and I was considering oscars (I've had oscars before, and I loved them to pieces.) some reading I've been doing though suggests I might have been lucky having 3 oscars get along in a 100gal tank. So I'm re-evaluating the stocking options.

Anyways, here are the photos of the build so far:

Plywood mocked up.. This is my GF's son. I told him he would be going in the fishtank if he was bad! :p


The stand framed up. (it will get a shell and some nice doors before it's done):


Starting to put the plywood up, with the regrettable step of trying to use polyurethane construction adhesive to form fillets in the corners (later had to scrape it all off, cuz it bubbled)




Lots of screws...


Filling the screw holes and filling/reinforcing the seams with fiberglass putty:


From the front with some of the undergravel plumbing in place:


Some fiberglass putt fillets in the interior seams:




After I finish with all the seams, I'm going to reinforce the seams further with fiberglass/epoxy, and then seal the whole thing with epoxy. My front window should be here in a week and a half or so, so I've got to get ready for that, too, which includes making the front window frame.

Let me know what you think!
 

rwilliams254

AC Members
May 16, 2007
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Scottsdale, AZ
Interesting idea.
 

Rbishop

Administrator
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Dec 30, 2005
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Great! Keep this build post going!
 

pcnicholson

3 more tanks to bankruptcy!
Apr 2, 2007
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Mesquite, TX
In my experience children have a pretty high bio load so keeping one in a tank of this size is not recommended. However, they have been known to school, so with the proper filtration....
 
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