957-gallon DIY acrylic tank?

[Omega]

My brother is building a shop and house on some property up north and wants a huge fish tank. He's a DIYer all the way and can make almost anything himself so I suggested acrylic.

As I understand it the sheets come in 4' by 8' so if the tank was 4 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 8 feet long, how thick would the acrylic have to be?

 

[buyobuyo]

Here is an article for calculating the thicknesses for a custom glass aquarium. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/articles/technical/glassthickness/

The calculations for an acrylic tank would be the same. You would just need to plug-in the right numbers. My guess from what I've read online would be that you would need an 1" or thicker.

 

[Jaysn]

Check out www.garf.org too, they have a lot of info on building tanks too. That's going to be an awesome tank!

 

[Omega]

Garf says not to build a tank higher than 30 inches I already tried them.

I remember an article about doing this very thing a while ago. I can't find it now and don't remember what website it was from.

 

[necigrad]

Stupid question. How is he going to do any tank floor maintance? Even hip waders won't be good enough!

 

[mg6682]

If I was to do a tank that big I'd go this route, vs an all acrylic set-up http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_1700g_tank_1.php

 

[Omega]

My bro's a metal worker. Maybe instead of plywood it could be steal or aluminum?

 

[Mgamer20o0]

4 feet.... thats one tall tank.

 

[Rbishop]

Keep it short for ease of maintaining, and leave plenty of room for euipment with easy access.

 

[Omega]

We're bringing the height down to 30 inches, which will allow us to only have to use 1" cell cast acrylic.