My 400G Through-wall "deceptively deep" tank

sfsuphysics said:
Fun fun stuff.

A question, as I've never had starfire type of glass on an aquarium, but I thought it was supposed to be really clear and not green at all. Unboxing picture http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=23874391&postcount=116 shows the styrofoam looked quite green, almost as much on the bottom pane as on the side. Either way tank looks amazing :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not sure what was going on there - perhaps it's the sunlight or angle or something. If you want to see just how optically clear it is, look at photo below. In this case we're looking directly through 1.5" of tempered starfire glass, and I can't see any difference between the colour of the door above the tank and the colour of the door when you're looking through the tank. Also, the white colour of Mario's shirt is, well, white.

positioning-the-tank.jpg

sfsuphysics said:
As to the tempered glass, if any window is less than 2 feet from an door or within 18" of the ground it needs to be tempered, this is because if you lean up against it (people have done so when opening doors) with a hand or what not, it's much stronger, and if it does break you don't have jagged shards to cut you up. Be lucky they don't consider fish tanks as part of the home, because IIRC tempered glass is required within 60 inches of wet areas, which your fish room would probably be considered :D
Click to expand...

Well, I guess it make sense. I'd have thought people would lean on the wall rather than the window (behind the blinds) though... Still, it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things...

We have (small windows that open)(large window)(small windows that open) in that room, and I'm seriously happy they don't want tempered glass in the large window - that's a 16' by 4' double-glazed window! Replacing *that* with tempered glass would be expensive...

Oh and welcome to the build-thread - good to see another physicist (presumably) around ... we're a vanishing breed.

Simon
 
Yup could have been the sunlight doing some funky things, that last pictures shows it off better as the wall color is basically identical through the tank or not.

Thanks for the welcome, every now and then I poke my head back in here and scan the first few tanks yours just happened to not get shuffled to page 2+ :D. Kind of ex-physicist though :D
 
Holey Schmoly

Holey Schmoly

So, I used to have a 225 gallon tank for NSW which is happily positioned at the opposite end of the house. That was fine for a 240G display. For the 400G display, I wanted to add on another tank, and I wanted it to be of sufficient size that the combined volume would let me do a full water change if needed.

So, I bought another 325G tank (which was the largest I could fit in the room I had on the other side of the house) from plastic-mart.com. Yesterday, it turned up, and passed its visual inspection on coming off the truck, but when I got home, I noticed that there was actually a hole in the tank...

holey-tank.jpg

... where someone had put what looks to be a prong of a forklift right through it. I don't own a forklift... Another problem was that they hadn't put the bulkhead in, so there was no way to link it up to my system.

So, I emailed plastic-mart yesterday evening, and got a phone response today at noon - they're going to send out a new tank (at their expense), and they'll make sure this one has a bulkhead in it so I can gang it together with the existing 225G tank and link it into my system.

Now on the downside, I'm a bit annoyed that the new tank will arrive *after* the builders have completed their plumbing (so I don't get it professionally plumbed "for free"), but on the upside, I don't really see how they could have done anything more for me than what they did. Mistakes happen, I understand, so overall I have to applaud their customer service.

Now, though, I'm stuck with a 325G tank that has a hole in. Plastic-mart don't want to ship it back (understandably), so it's just sitting here. Does anyone know if it's possible to repair something like this ? I mean, I guess I could turn it into a real silver-lining if I could somehow use the tank...

Worst case, I'm guessing I could drill a hole for a big bulkhead and just cap it off ? It'd have to be a darn big bulkhead though, that's about 4" of horizontal hole. Ideally I'd prefer to patch it, but the tank is made of polyethylene, is there something like weld-on for polyethylene ?

Open to ideas... I did find this, which may be an option...

Simon.
 
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Spaced Cowboy said:
So, I used to have a 225 gallon tank for NSW which is happily positioned at the opposite end of the house. That was fine for a 240G display. For the 400G display, I wanted to add on another tank, and I wanted it to be of sufficient size that the combined volume would let me do a full water change if needed.

So, I bought another 325G tank (which was the largest I could fit in the room I had on the other side of the house) from plastic-mart.com. Yesterday, it turned up, and passed its visual inspection on coming off the truck, but when I got home, I noticed that there was actually a hole in the tank...

holey-tank.jpg

... where someone had put what looks to be a prong of a forklift right through it. I don't own a forklift... Another problem was that they hadn't put the bulkhead in, so there was no way to link it up to my system.

So, I emailed plastic-mart yesterday evening, and got a phone response today at noon - they're going to send out a new tank (at their expense), and they'll make sure this one has a bulkhead in it so I can gang it together with the existing 225G tank and link it into my system.

Now on the downside, I'm a bit annoyed that the new tank will arrive *after* the builders have completed their plumbing (so I don't get it professionally plumbed "for free"), but on the upside, I don't really see how they could have done anything more for me than what they did. Mistakes happen, I understand, so overall I have to applaud their customer service.

Now, though, I'm stuck with a 325G tank that has a hole in. Plastic-mart don't want to ship it back (understandably), so it's just sitting here. Does anyone know if it's possible to repair something like this ? I mean, I guess I could turn it into a real silver-lining if I could somehow use the tank...

Worst case, I'm guessing I could drill a hole for a big bulkhead and just cap it off ? It'd have to be a darn big bulkhead though, that's about 4" of horizontal hole. Ideally I'd prefer to patch it, but the tank is made of polyethylene, is there something like weld-on for polyethylene ?

Open to ideas... I did find this, which may be an option...

Simon.
Click to expand...

With Polyethylene a good hot air gun and a patch would allow you to repair it, you would just not want to over heat one area to the point it would bubble. Though once it gets up to temperature its really easy to work with... I bought several small boxes from a local plastic manufacturer for cheap as they made them the incorrect size for their customer, after I cut one open to make it my quarantine tank, I used the cutout to patch all the mold openings in all the tanks
 
Theokie said:
With Polyethylene a good hot air gun and a patch would allow you to repair it, you would just not want to over heat one area to the point it would bubble. Though once it gets up to temperature its really easy to work with... I bought several small boxes from a local plastic manufacturer for cheap as they made them the incorrect size for their customer, after I cut one open to make it my quarantine tank, I used the cutout to patch all the mold openings in all the tanks
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks. So I have a hot-air gun as part of my soldering station. Never used it on plastic, but looks like the melting pt is 115"“135 °C (239"“275 °F) which I'm pretty sure the gun can do. I guess I just need to source some patches then.

Cheers,
Simon
 
Any chance to stand the tank vertically? Or is designed for laying on the side as shown in the picture?

An initial worry about any patch is that it would be external, so all the water pressure inside would be working against it, now whether or not that makes a difference is to be seen.

Although looking at this youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Fkhz2G9Is doesn't seem terribly hard to fix the stuff. Maybe you could find some local hobbyist who's willing to put in the effort to buy it from you.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Any chance to stand the tank vertically? Or is designed for laying on the side as shown in the picture?
Click to expand...

Nope, it's rounded at the ends and has a huge 16" manhole-type access on the "top". It's supposed to stand as in the photo, which is where the flat parts are. Here's a link to the PDF technical drawing.

sfsuphysics said:
An initial worry about any patch is that it would be external, so all the water pressure inside would be working against it, now whether or not that makes a difference is to be seen.

Although looking at this youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Fkhz2G9Is doesn't seem terribly hard to fix the stuff. Maybe you could find some local hobbyist who's willing to put in the effort to buy it from you.
Click to expand...

Agreed on the fact that the patch isn't on the inside is a concern. On the upside, the shape of the hole is pretty conducive to patching - it's long and thin rather than a big hole. I've bought some patching strips from Amazon, and we'll see how close to that video I can get it to look like :) Given that you melt and reform the plastic, I think it ought to be pretty much as strong as the original, once patched. I don't care if its not that pretty, I'll make sure there's enough plastic on it to give it the structural strength it needs.

And then I'll have 875G of NSW on tap. That's pretty cool :) I'll have to lay a concrete pad for it though and make sure the level is the same as the other tank because it's going to have to go behind the bushes...

Simon
 
Aquarius interruptus

Aquarius interruptus

So we've made a bit more progress on the tank front - the paint is done and they're starting on fixtures and wood staining...

tank-in-the-wall.jpg

However things on a personal front have come to a screaming stop. Literally. If you look closely you can see I have my (broken) arm in a sling. It's a bit blurry because you're seeing reflections off the back and front glass, but the sling is there. That's due to this car:

bike-impact.png

My head made the lower indentation on the windscreen, but the Apple-issued bike helmet did its job perfectly. No damage to the old cranium at all. My elbow made the upper indentation, and I broke the radius bone right at the joint. That hurts. My knee made the indentation on the side of the car. My knee isn't even sore. I wish they made elbows like they make knees...

I was doing about 25mph on the bike, going along my cycle-lane when a lady decided to turn right across my path. I had no chance - could just see it all unfolding, knew I was going to hit, and couldn't do a thing about it.

Cue police, ambulance ride to hospital, various questions about who I am etc... I'm looking on the bright side, a broken elbow and bruising in places I didn't know I had places is nothing compared to what the outcome would have been if she had turned a half-second later; I would have been under the car instead of bouncing off the side/front, and that wouldn't have ended well for me at all.

On a different note, ER doctors have no sense of humour - when I was asked "Are you allergic to anything?" and I answered "cars, apparently", I got a 5 minute lecture on how I was wasting his time. I was stoic.

Being an ageing physicist with a slightly morbid sense of humour, I worked out what the impact energy was: about 9050 Joules. For reference, a .22 bullet carries ~450 Joules of energy, and the punch of a super-heavyweight boxer comes in at ~2000 joules. Of course, pressure is what makes a bullet lethal (pressure = force/area and a bullet has a very small cross-sectional area), but still...

Anyway, this is a lot to type with only one arm working, so I'll end here.

Simon.
 
ghellin said:
Wow! Glad you are ok! Tank setup is looking great!
Click to expand...

Thefishwrangler said:
Wowza! Sorry to hear about your accident. Glad the helmet saved you though! Your tank and new fish room look awesome.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys, and welcome both to the thread :)

We're making some progress on the renovation, but not too many things that are relevant to the tank (wood staining, painting, stuck etc.). I'll post an update showing the new tank in the wall a bit later (guys are working on it right now).

Simon.
 
Glad you are ok! We have had a few cyclists killed near where we live. It's just too dangerous as motorists just don't see cyclists well.
 
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