Glass lined plywood tank, will this work?

I just have a little more faith in wood and screws than i do in glass and silicone. Even though i have built around 300 tanks, i still cross my fingers everytime i water test a big one. Also, if my 1 year old were to bang a toy against the side of a plywood tank i wouldnt have any worries, not sure if i could say the same for an all glass tank of 400 gallons.
 
If you were to re-enforce the plywood with something that is very rigid..say oak, i don't think it will flex enough to worry about it. as for expansion issues, i think it will be fine. I myself would make a 1x4 oak frame, with 3/4" plywood panels, and use 1/4 glass


Mike
 
I think I'd start by making friends with an engineer or a kid who gets A's in physics, just to get an idea of the loads that you'll be dealing with at full depth. Red oak, plywoods, southern yellow pine, they all have known structural properties that should be looked at along with the holding properties of the adhesives and fasteners used. Depending on how you frame it you'll have all sorts of compounding forces at work on the materials. Shear, compression and tension, dynamic and static loads, all limited by the strength of the weakest link.

Anything is possible as long as you know what the forces and loads are that you have to contain.

As for potentially catastrophic failures...
My son tossed a little plastic toy that hit our 30g. when he was just old enough to sit up on his own. Must have hit it just right 'cuz we were swimmin' in fish that night. 30 gallons of water can make a heck of a mess in the living room. I don't even want to think about 400.
 
foolishfish said:
I think I'd start by making friends with an engineer or a kid who gets A's in physics, just to get an idea of the loads that you'll be dealing with at full depth. Red oak, plywoods, southern yellow pine, they all have known structural properties that should be looked at along with the holding properties of the adhesives and fasteners used. Depending on how you frame it you'll have all sorts of compounding forces at work on the materials. Shear, compression and tension, dynamic and static loads, all limited by the strength of the weakest link.

Anything is possible as long as you know what the forces and loads are that you have to contain.

As for potentially catastrophic failures...
My son tossed a little plastic toy that hit our 30g. when he was just old enough to sit up on his own. Must have hit it just right 'cuz we were swimmin' in fish that night. 30 gallons of water can make a heck of a mess in the living room. I don't even want to think about 400.
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Me either, i cant imagine trying to clean up 400 gallons of water and fish!
 
As far as a strait forward large 300-500 max rectangular wood aquarium with glass front viewing its not a big deal especially if you keep your height (water column down to 18" because its depth or piled up water that is exerting the greatest forces. An 18" column of water is equivalent to 1/10th the weight and pressure of the entire earth's atmosphere or 15 feet of water is 1 earth's atmosphere (ground to outer space) which is why your ear drums can rupture if you don't equalize the pressure is so great when diving.

Past 30 inches and you need to seriously consider abandoning a rectangle shape for round, a round container can handle substantially more water with less material and less supported structures. If I was going to build a very large free standing aquarium say 60 inches high and 50 feet across and 81 feet around and 41,000 gallons. All I would need structurally would be is piece of sheet steel 60" X 81' X 1/32" thick and 9 lag bolts, about 120 pounds of material with the viewing screen on top (air). Which could be built or disassembled in 1 day by two people at a cost of about $3000 and fit in the back of a mini pick up truck. The water pressure itself would provide most of the support to hold the walls in place, why large buckets are round not rectangular.
 
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You're describing an above ground pool kit. I used to build swimming pools, among other things, and we did 100's of above ground pools each season. One in particular comes to mind 'cuz it gave me nightmares.

I had seen a video of a pool liner failure where 18,000 gallons washed out a stockade fence, which in turn struck another 24,000 pool in the next backyard down the hill from the first. The combined tsunami then washed at an angle across the back of the neighboring house and ripped a new porch clean off while blowing all of the basement windows out and flooding the house's basement.

We were asked to build a 54' X 28' oval above ground pool on a flat piece of ground about 10' in elevation above the owner's home. Our work was always dead level and complete but it's just one of those things that makes you a little extra careful, especially with the images of that video in mind.

The pool was essentially (2) 28' rounds flanged and bolted together. When complete it took (3) tractor trailer loads of water and a couple of days of sucking the owner's well dry to fill. When we got back to the plant there were three engineers eagerly awaiting our arrival. Not being used to such a greeting I was pretty curious myself what the occasion was.

They asked how the build went and were told that everything went smooth as usual. I swear the three of them all let out a collective sigh in unison. Then they told me that they weren't even sure themselves that it would work 'cuz they'd never tried one that big before. Can you imagine? These are the knuckleheads that design the darn things. I raised my prices that afternoon and doubled my insurance.

As flimsy as those pools look they are incredibly strong. An oval with a series of viewing windows is totally doable I'm sure. The only issues would be the proper flanging of the window to the wall and getting a plastic that is both U.V. stable and capable of replacing the structural properties of the steel that is removed. It wouldn't exactly be a thing of beauty but it would certainly work.
 
I built a tank like this several (20) years ago and it worked fine. I started by building an external frame out of 2x4s, lined the inside of the tank with 1/4" plexiglass, sealed all the the corners and filled it up. The tank measures 96x30x30 inside, the viewing window was 1/2" plexiglass. I had the tank for 3-4 years before I noticed a leak that was unrelated to the building method. If I was going to do it over agaain, which I will at a later date, I'd use liquid rubber from permidri http://www.permadri.com/pond-coat.html or maybe bluemax http://www.amesresearch.com/bluemax.htm.
 
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