Bonding Acrylic pieces for tank

I'm looking into building my own aquarium and I got a few pieces of acrylic cut. I wanted to know what you guys thought was the best way to bond them together. There area three products in particular out there I wanted to get your opinions on them: silicon, IPS16 and acrylic cement.

I don't like the white residue that silicon produces, it kind of ruins the aesthetics of the tank. I want to try and keep the tank looking as clean as possible.

 

IPS weld-on 16, and get lots of scrap pieces to practice on. It's not easy to do correctly. And to really build a tank you will need some fancier tools to finish the edges after bonding. Like a router with a flush cut bit. Also you want to make sure the acrylic is cell cast and not extruded. There are many other things as well. Too many to list out on here.

How big of tank are you thinking? What thickness acrylic are you using?

 

Silicone is worthless with acrylic for tank building.

 

Right now I'm practicing on a 26"Lx15"Wx15"H with a 3/8" thickness for acrylic. I want to try and get this one right before I build a bigger one, this one is just for practice.

 

i just made my first acrylic waterbox - a 20 gal reservoir split for ro/do and also sw mixing. i used the following pages for resources:

About.com: http://fins.actwin.com/diy/acrylic.html

Do It Yourself Aquarium Projects

http://www.garf.org/Tank/BuildTank.asp

Weld On Glue Plastic Adhesives- Plexiglass Glue for acrylic sheets.

the first two are some basic pointers on working with acrylic
the garf page is GREAT - it'll give you a cut sheet for any size box you want to make, and then gives you step by step assembly instructions with pics that were very helpful
the eplastics/ridout plastics site is where you'll get weld-on (i used 16 and 4) from, and they have videos demonstrating how to do the bonding.

this should get you started! have fun

 

melevsreef .com was very helpful for me check it out. He bracks down how to use the glue and the tools needed.