75,000gal tank Looking for information sources

[Ilawis]

A single sheet would make this tank incredible looking! I own a factory in china and my neighbor is an acrylic manufacturing company who builds public aquarium displays. I do believe they can produce 40ft x 20ft sheets up to 20cm thick.. 8inches

That's awesome.
Where are you living as this build is in perth Australia.
The factory in China what does it produce?
Ideally I would want the acrylic made in Australia as sea shipping a piece of acrylic that large may be a little problematic (extra cost damage size etc) however if the initial cost is good then these things can be overcome

 

[Ilawis]

Here is a picture of one of their sheets.. not exactly sure what the dimensions are for this sheet.

View attachment 1165768

That's will be a nice size tank

 

[Ilawis]

Sounds to me like you need to make some phone calls or e-mails to as many public aquariums as possible bout leads towards manufacturers and hope you find a responsive curator or staff. ATM out of Las Vegas apparently does aquariums of some magnitude for casinos and such, there may be others who have. We have a guy in our town that had a 35K gallon (from what I read on the very limited references on the internet) aquarium built at his place, 25' by 10' cylinder, about 16 years ago. I'd heard about it back in '98 but left town for 14 years, actually knew his maintenance person (found this out the week before I moved, never got to see it). His house was up for sale last year and pics made it on the real estate site... was taken down in 2 weeks, probably too many gawkers wanting to see his reef shark collection. Wish I knew him so I could steer you in the right direction. He was bigtime in the casino gaming software biz and probably had connections with whoever was doing large aquariums in casinos. I've emailed an aquarium with a fish question years ago and was surprised at how responsive they were... that may be your best bet.

I think your right however being that this tank is in perth Australia there is only one public aquarium that I know of in the city it does have some large aquariums but the biggest pane of acrilic I saw there was about 15ft across by about 8ft high
Being in the construction trades I have found that most people who work in places like aquariums only know about the fish and how to maintain them not on the actual construction of them but there is no harm in making a few calls or emails to see if I can get hold of the architect of the construction
ATM would be great to talk to but their business is very much geared toward doing the entire build and their TV show so the cost of getting them to build a tank outside of the USA would far blow out my budget (even tho I haven't fixed a budget yet as it is still in the design stages but my wife would kill me all the same) however it may not hurt to send them a email asking if there is any resources that may be of use to me if they don't reply it's no harm done

 

[spiff44]

For something that serious... you wouldn't want to make any decisions based on what some strangers on the internet is telling you. There are calculators available.. if they go up to the specs you're looking for use them... otherwise it would be worth it to pay a professional to compute for you. Mimicking existing builds not a bad idea either.

 

[Kaia]

Sounds to me like you need to make some phone calls or e-mails to as many public aquariums as possible bout leads towards manufacturers and hope you find a responsive curator or staff. ATM out of Las Vegas apparently does aquariums of some magnitude for casinos and such, there may be others who have. We have a guy in our town that had a 35K gallon (from what I read on the very limited references on the internet) aquarium built at his place, 25' by 10' cylinder, about 16 years ago. I'd heard about it back in '98 but left town for 14 years, actually knew his maintenance person (found this out the week before I moved, never got to see it). His house was up for sale last year and pics made it on the real estate site... was taken down in 2 weeks, probably too many gawkers wanting to see his reef shark collection. Wish I knew him so I could steer you in the right direction. He was bigtime in the casino gaming software biz and probably had connections with whoever was doing large aquariums in casinos. I've emailed an aquarium with a fish question years ago and was surprised at how responsive they were... that may be your best bet.

I also recommend asking ATM they had a tv show for a while and are experts on acrylic tanks of this magnitude

 

[Ilawis]

For something that serious... you wouldn't want to make any decisions based on what some strangers on the internet is telling you. There are calculators available.. if they go up to the specs you're looking for use them... otherwise it would be worth it to pay a professional to compute for you. Mimicking existing builds not a bad idea either.

Yes I do agree with both points you have
That is why I'm looking for information sources and and information on past builds is crucial
One of the advantages of asking questions here is by bouncing ideas off of ''strangers on the internet '' it is a rather effective way of minimising and spotting potential problems while still in the design phase as we have seen already in these posts of things I need to ask the manufacturer of the acrilic about the UV effects on the sheet and has then got me thinking of ways to design in preventive measures eg a awning over the surface for during the most damaging times of the day
The calculations I have seen say the 5.1 inches of acrilic are needed however as these calculators are only designed as far as I can tell for standard sizes of acrilic maxing out at 2 inches thick looking for more information from the community may point me in the right direction for a better thickness just as when I call suppliers I won't take the word of just the first supplier I ask for what I need I will require at least 3 quotes and more detailed information on the product
I am finding it a little hard to mimic existing builds at the moment as I seem to pull up blanks on building specs for any tank over a meter tall plenty of specs for plywood tanks but connecting to concrete or steel seems to be a hard one to find

 

[Ilawis]

I also recommend asking ATM they had a tv show for a while and are experts on acrylic tanks of this magnitude

I think I will ask them they have also recently released a couple more seasons of their show and seem to be making bigger and better tanks than past seasons

 

[Ilawis]

One of the main things I'm having trouble trying to find out how to do it the connection between the acrylic and the concrete.
At present the way I have it designed is the concrete comes up to box section steel that will have the reinforcement bar weilded to the box section and the acrylic is connected to the box section and I beams that make up the frame but it is the seeling between the acrylic and steel that I'm most worried about eg is it just siliconed together(seems a bit stupid). drill holes in the acrylic and bolt it down between 2 steel plates
Do the same but with no holes in the acrylic
Does it use a rubber gasket or silicone or some other type of adhesive?

 

[wannadivesteve]

I think your right however being that this tank is in perth Australia there is only one public aquarium that I know of in the city it does have some large aquariums but the biggest pane of acrilic I saw there was about 15ft across by about 8ft high
Being in the construction trades I have found that most people who work in places like aquariums only know about the fish and how to maintain them not on the actual construction of them but there is no harm in making a few calls or emails to see if I can get hold of the architect of the construction
ATM would be great to talk to but their business is very much geared toward doing the entire build and their TV show so the cost of getting them to build a tank outside of the USA would far blow out my budget (even tho I haven't fixed a budget yet as it is still in the design stages but my wife would kill me all the same) however it may not hurt to send them a email asking if there is any resources that may be of use to me if they don't reply it's no harm done

I wasn't really recommending using ATM for the exact reason you suggest, but since you are so far they might be willing to impart a little information. There's gotta be someone in Asia and elsewhere that builds large tanks, or public aquariums whose curators were directly involved in the build and at least knows some of the basics of of what was used for plate thicknesses, spans and materials that can get you pointed in the right direction, but you'd need someone locally to do the engineering. A bunch if DIY guys who've worked with 200- 4000 gallon tanks really don't have the background for the type of thing you're building. Good luck, it sounds like a very exciting project!

 

[wannadivesteve]

Just a thought.... Google Bob Fenner. He's an aquarist and author whose name pops up on message boards when I'm doing internet searches. I met him scuba diving at the Place of Refuge in Kona about 8-10 years ago, when he found out I had a dive company he was very engaged in conversation. He's been looking at starting a public aquarium at times and I'd bet he knows a lot of people on that end of the business. I don't know him, but from my limited experience with him and seeing his activity on message boards, he seems very approachable. He might be the kind of contact you are looking for.