aquarium made out of plywood?

Ive seen one in person myself. We got a repair call out for a 500g plywood aquarium which sprung a leak "somewhere" lol. The problem with the plywood systems from what I saw is that you will either need to coat the entire inside with liquid acrylic, in which case...you might as well buy yourself a normal aquarium, or you will have to deal with leaks that pop up from time to time as the seals between the wood and the front window panel erode. The one system we took a look at, it was cheaper to just buy a new aquarium. We would have needed to basically take the entire system apart and rebuild it.

 

from my understanding the only issues happen sometimes with the front panel but if you layer some fiberglass on that front panel it fixes the issue where silicone doesnt bond as well to the rubber as fiberglass

 

There should be quite a few build threads on here if you do a search. I should know but for the life of me I can't think of one name of anyone that has one lol. I know there are several from a little while back.

 

I've thought about it before too...mostly back when I was into freshwater and $100 would cover lights and filtration. It was more of a built in custom size dream. But as many dreams as I have, very few make it into reality....;D

I have seen a few custom setups for sharks and rays on the web.

 

lol oh yes the costs of lighting something this large

cool idea I dont know if i would make a reef tank out of this but maybe a FOWLR

 

I built my plywood / epoxy / glass front 193g tank a couple years ago and it is well documented here on 3reef. No issues at all with how I built mine, but then again I took all factors into account. As with anything diy, there are some corners that you should not cut. The bigger the tank, the more attention to detail you need to pay.

If done right, like mine, it will last longer than an a traditional glass tank.

I'll need to bump my megathread to the top, as I am doing some major tank rescaping and planning a led fixture retro.

 

i actually went through your thread, your tank looks great