18' x 9' x 3.5' catfish tank build in progress.....

[basslover34]

Well if we follow the 1 inch per gallon rule with 2" guppies... (I prefer the 1 guppy per gallon rule, but let's be conservative here, we have lots of space!) You're talking about 2000 guppies. I bet it would take a LONG time for a bunch of 3 foot catfish to hunt down so many of such itty bitty treats. You may wind up with a self sustaining guppy community in your minster tank!

.... My 3 2'ers would wipe those out in a week

Maybe 2...If they arn't feeling well

 

[necrocanis]

i hate you out of jealousy, but i love you out of envy. want an albino asian redtail for that tank?

Thanks, and if that cat is free consider it done lol.

3rd most awesome tank ever!

Thanks! To me it's No.1 though lol.

now thats dedication.

Tell me about it. I'd be out working on it 24/7 if I didn't have bills to pay lol

Having a shop do it would give you a nice result, but then if there are any imprefections you'l be super upset. If you do it yourself, it'll take a long time, but it will be worth it in the end - you've demonstrated that you are the kind of guy who can go slowly and do it properly without rushing, which is the #1 thing you need to hand lay nice FG work. I'd recommend getting or borrowing a die grinder and some roloc discs for sanding out any imperfections. You are planning to gelcoat over all the FG anyway, so it ought to be fine.

Another thing you might want to consider though is just how much fiberglass you're going to lay - it's not that cheap. Resin alone will cover a lot of square footage, but if you start laying down chopped strand mat over the whole tank, you will need about 5x as much resin. Brushes, Acetone, mixing buckets gloves, respirator cartridges, buttloads of sandpaper, filler, MEKP, and so on really adds up, and you don't often thing about those things when pricing out a FG job (speaking from too many experiences here). I think you might be really hard pressed to do it for under $1k.

I was actually thinking about just using the mat on all the seems, like the corners and where the boards meet on the ply. Then just a coat of resin over the rest with the gel coat over top. I'm really tight with my money. I'll ask everyone I know if they have some extra supplies lying around and see what I can come up with. lol You're right though my qoute on my price is for just the resin and gel coat. I already have about 100 sq ft of fiber mat just sitting around. I've been buying it up little by little everytime I go to a hardware store.

Have you asked them about doing it on site? That is an amazingly low price. I would want to know exactly what products they were using. Moving that thing would be a nightmare, however.

I would not consider renting a chopper gun and doing this yourself, even if you could find one. Spraying polyester is supposed to be very difficult, which is why many shops still do all of their work by hand.

What products will you be using exactly to do this for $500?

I already have about 2 gals of resin sitting around, and about 100 sq ft of mat. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it helps. Buying 5 gals of resin from the fg shop locally for $150, and buying 10 gals of gel coat. I'll have to look up the exact names, but the gel coat is a tooling gel coat that costs $125 for 5 gals, and comes with hardener. Going to cost me around another $100 to pigment it black.

I'll hopefully have pics up later tonight if I have a chance. did a little more to the last wall.

 

[ITHURTZ]

how bout just get a pond liner and cut holes for the windows? I plan to do it to my 180gal once i figure out where to house them for a few days while the silicone cures

 

[necrocanis]

.... My 3 2'ers would wipe those out in a week

Maybe 2...If they arn't feeling well

I think my 38" hybrid would ignore all that didn't accidentally get inhaled. lol

 

[CJH]

I already have about 2 gals of resin sitting around, and about 100 sq ft of mat. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it helps. Buying 5 gals of resin from the fg shop locally for $150, and buying 10 gals of gel coat. I'll have to look up the exact names, but the gel coat is a tooling gel coat that costs $125 for 5 gals, and comes with hardener. Going to cost me around another $100 to pigment it black.

If you're buying the resin from a local shop it's probably good stuff. I would talk to them about the best type of cloth/mat/roving to use. Dimensional lumber is pretty weak across it's face so you'll want to add as much strength as possible with the fiberglass.

So tooling gelcoat is okay as a topcoat? I've never used it and thought it was only for sculpting and coating molds. Make sure you get your glass installed before applying the gelcoat since not much of anything sticks to tooling gel coats. But maybe there is more than one type of tooling gel coat. And like I said I've never used them.

 

[zennzzo]

how bout just get a pond liner and cut holes for the windows? I plan to do it to my 180gal once i figure out where to house them for a few days while the silicone cures

Not a bad idea...can always go back and glass it later...

 

[Pharaoh]

FYI. I have been somewhat searching around on fiberglass as of late. I noticed that you can buy it by the yard for a fairly reasonable price. But where you ask? EBAY!!! Everything for cheap. You can have your choice of the thickness of the matting too.

 

[necrocanis]

Hey guys. Everyone is throwing around some good ideas. So that it's known I was thrown onto the idea of a tooling gelcoat as others have used it with success. I know everyone would like to see me use top of the line everything, but if I had done that the lumber portion of this would have been over $2000. Right now it's not over $1000. So here's a few pics of the progress of yesterday. As before it's only about 30 mins worth of work, but hey got to keep my peps happy right?

I'll have to look into that mat on ebay. I don't know why I didn't look there before. There's a guy on there that I am thinking of getting my acryllic from. SO far it's the cheapest that I can find.

Oh and for those looking to make your own plywood tank I've found so far that using a rubber mallet like the one in the pics here comes in really handy for getting wood into tight spots.

 

[necrocanis]

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'll more than likely have the schwans job I was talking about. That's good because I'll be making more than in the military, and I'll have a second job on top of that one. What does this mean for this project? I can kick it into high gear. I have to get this thing sealed soon or it will be too cold in the garage. Once the temps outside get down to around 0 F or lower I cannot properly heat the garage to over 65 F that most resin requires for setup. My next project after this tank is to build an addition to the garage so that I can plumb it, heat it, and add a large floor drain. After I finish that I can do the auto-water change system to this tank.

 

[zennzzo]

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'll more than likely have the schwans job I was talking about. That's good because I'll be making more than in the military, and I'll have a second job on top of that one. What does this mean for this project? I can kick it into high gear. I have to get this thing sealed soon or it will be too cold in the garage. Once the temps outside get down to around 0 F or lower I cannot properly heat the garage to over 65 F that most resin requires for setup. My next project after this tank is to build an addition to the garage so that I can plumb it, heat it, and add a large floor drain. After I finish that I can do the auto-water change system to this tank.

Congrats on the Schwans gig...I salute that yellow truck every time I see one...their food rocks!...I especially love their hallucinogenic Chocolate Ice Cream...