I find this thread very interesting. I've followed Del's (dsandfort) thread since the beginning, and researched (actually made phone calls and got price quotes) both the glass and the plywood tank. And both the paying-someone-to-do-it, and the DIY method. From my research, the plywood DIY is hands-down, without a doubt cheaper. My estimated cost to build a 10ft X 3ft X 2ft plywood tank was around $1800 (in Hawaii, where EVERYTHING is expensive). The glass for a DIY glass tank was $3000. I couldn't even find someone that would build a glass tank this size, but a custom acrylic tank of my dimensions was over $4000, and the guy required me to buy a stand built by him also!
All the threads I read up until this point all said that it's cheaper to build your own tank, as long as it's bigger than 100 gallons.
My numbers might be much different than yours, though, since I'm in Hawaii, where the cost of things doesn't really follow any logic. I've also heard many times that glass is more expensive than acrylic. But here, glass is MUCH cheaper than acrylic (for the raw materials).
I also calculated out my electrical costs (since I pay $0.22 per KW-hour here), and I was able to keep it around $100-$150 per month. But it took a lot of research to find the most power-friendly equipment...
