Gilles

At this moment i have a small 10 gallon tank in which i have red fire shrimp. I haven't finished my big tank or i allready have the next project i am working on. This time i am going to create my own (as cheap as possible) DIY shrimp farm. I have ordered shrimps from Ryan Wood (Excellent service btw), and shrimp need space to hatch, so had to build something. The shelves the shrimp tanks would be placed on, had been lying weeks in my garage.


Idea fase
My initial idea was to place 3 tanks on the shelves, measuring 90cmx40cmx30cm high. This tank would be separated into 3 smaller tanks measuring 30cmx40cmx30cm. Filtration would be done by using an air pump and the plant lightning (yes i want some small plants) would come from a 11w energy saver bulb. My garage is shared, which means i have my own little space behind a sealed door. This means it is semi-heated.

After some carefull consideration, i decided to make my tanks out of so called "betonplex" (I don't know the English name) in the Netherlands, which is really plywood with a really good water resistant coating. This meant i'd skip the large tank idea and go for the 9 smaller tanks idea. A smaller tank is also better to lift from the shelf. Each tank will have 8 US gallons of water.


Construction
I ended up using 2 plates of 255cm by 125cm which normally cost about 126USD per plate. This would mean i had to buy 250$ wood Luckily, i ended up at a cheap timber shop which did all the sawing for me, and i ended up spending 140$ for 2 plates! That is a better price!

The glass for the tanks (front, so i can see something) costed me 80$, so i ended up (construction wise) spending 140$+80$+20$(glue/screws) 240$ for 9 tanks, meaning 26$ per tank. If i bought the tanks from glass, they would cost me 47$/piece. This means almost double the price i made them for!


The (semi) finished tanks
All tanks are assembled on thesame way. They have been screwed and glued (hehe) Screws are for strength , the glue to make it water tight. All holes where pre-drilled using a vertical drill. This means that each part has thesame number of holes on thesame position. I have tried a number of different techniques (while building, you learn..)

Technique 1:
I started by sanding the edges where the glue would come. This because the web said i had to in order to create a good glue connection. This meant i sanded, degreased it, put kit (glue) on it and next i screwed the plates. This resulted in glue coming out of every hole. When i cleaned this using my finger it still resulted in a lot of glue ending up on the sides of the tank which i did not like. On the indside, i put glue in the corners to seal it watertight.

Technique 2:
Thesame as above, minus the sanding. This still gave to much glue and was very dirty work.

Technique 3:
Don't glue the boards, just screw them together. When the tank is done, put glue on the inside to make the seals water thight. By far this was the cleanest result and costed me the least glue. It should be as water tight as technique 1/2 but time will tell.






The shelve





Making some room to glue in the front window
After i finished the tanks, i had to put in the front window. First i had to clean my garage since it was a mess I glued the windows with black silicone kit to the wood, and after that had dried i glued with transparant silicone on the inside to ensure it is water tight.








Press the glass using all you can find





Filtration:











Lights/electrics:
Instead of using 11w energy saver bulbs which needed a lot of custom wiring i ended up with a fluorescant light of 21w (T5) with exactly the length i needed.






Overview:





Right now i am priming my tanks with salt water to eradicate any dirt or bacteria left behind. Today i am going to switch the air pump i currently have (550 liters / hour for 9 tanks) for a bigger version (1800 liters / hour for 9 tanks). This saturday i am going to fill the tanks with water from my big tank and put the spongue in so the filter can prime.

GlitcH

Very interesting.
I hope you were right, just screwing the boards together then gluing. Personally, I think I would have played it safe and slathered the stuff on. LOL
One thing I'd like to mention about the black silicone......some of it is mold resistant......that's bad for shrimp. I hear that some fish can deal with it but not shrimp. Read the package well, hopefully it doesn't say mold or mildew resistant.
Anyway.......great thread and I hope it all works out for ya.

hoppycalif

That wood material is interesting. Do you know what the water proof coating on the wood is?

I think I would have relied on the glue for strength, instead of the screws, based on my experience with "woodworkers glue", which is stronger than the wood itself. But, I understand the squeeze out problem too. The tanks aren't so big that there is a lot of pressure trying to separate the joints, so I suspect they will work fine.

Very interesting project!

Gilles

@Hoppy: The coating is made of epoxy, and the English name is "film-faced plywood". So far, none of my tanks started leaking and they have been filled with water since 2 weeks now. The tanks have started priming and my shrimp will arrive in 1,5 week

New pics will follow then.

hoppycalif

Another annoying question: Gilles, do you know of anyone with tanks build similar to these? How long do they last, or are they essentially good for life, as glass tanks are?

I have heard and read about people building tanks with plywood, then coating the inside with epoxy for water proofing, but I think they also always use fiberglass in the coating to prevent any cracking of the epoxy. I have a dim memory of the tanks tending to leak a bit.

yum

wow. what a cool project! i'm too nervous about leaks to attempt something like this! well... that and the lady won't have it in the house. lol. i get a 20 gallon in the living room and that's it... although when i finally get a home with a basement she said i can go nuts.

Gilles

Still no leaks (all is running for 2 months now), going to start in my new house this weekend with construction.

xpistalpetex

pictures!!!! pictures!!!!