[scolley]

You will spend more money for the glass than you would for a ready to go tank if you try to build your own bow front. If you are "handy" you might be able to pull it off using acrylic.

Agreed fully. In fact, if you don't devise some form of a frame for the top, even a rectangular glass tank of all glass can cost more than an off-the-shelf framed tank. The expense is indeed in the glass. Tools can cost a pretty penny too.

I'm the guy that crazy.eddie mentioned, the one that built his own tank. You can do it. Really. But I would start with a rectangular tank. Then move up to bow front once your skill and confidence improve. And of course you've overcome the two largest hurdles - locating curved glass, and figuring out how thick your glass has to be for a non-rectangular tank.

If you decide to build rectangular, the thread crazy.eddie pointed you to provides most of the information you should need.

 

[scolley]

Thanks eddie! Someone PM'ed me at PlantedTank and asked me to pop over here and start a thread on tank building. And when I came over to look I saw THIS thread. Since I'll readily admit that my tank building adventures were not specific to planted tanks, but just aquariums in general, it seemed like a reasonable idea.

As for the hammer after the leaks... :shock: well, I was certainly tempted. But that low iron glass alone (with the bulkhead holes drilled) cost me a LOT more than a nice Oceanic. So let's just say the pain in my wallet tempered my frustration. :wink:

As for the thinking that building a glass tank is easy... IMO it is. Lot's of people do it all the time. But making a large one (say 55 and up) and making one that looks nice (flush edges, neat, small silicone seams) is not. But as I demonstrated, it can be done, and in my thread there are some posts from pros that indicated ways that it can be done even easier.

But IMO Daeorn would be much better off experimenting with acrylic. I would NOT try that in glass until I had both a little practice on rectangular or square tanks, and had located some reliable information on the glass thickness requirements for such a tank. And I have absolutely no idea where the get that information. I had a hard enough time locating that data (from a reliable source) for rectangular tank.