If someone in your area made custom sumps

Its alright, I miss it quite a bit. It funded the hobby much better than college does.

 

Before you decide your going to be able to do it cheaper have you priced sheets of a acrylic? They aren't cheap and I'm sure that's a good part of the price you pay when buying a sump. But if I had to choose between a premade commercial one and a custom made one that was roughly the same price I would by the custom every time.

Sent from my Devour using Tapatalk

 

Yes I have priced it out. Depending on the type of acrylic you are looking for (I would be using cast acrylic) its going to run around $160 for a 8x4 ft sheet of .220" acrylic. My rough dimensions figure that you can make apx 1.5 20-25 gallon sumps with this amount of acrylic. Thats pretty much just going off the amount of sq in required and the number of sq in in a 8x4 sheet. Maybe more maybe less, they are very much rough numbers at this time. Even with a 50% profit that still would leave me on the low end of other custom sumps.

 

First thanks for your service. I been checking into this also and custom is the way to go but you will have to make a few "generic" ones first and get the lfs behind you. Check for a reef club in your area and see if there is anyone there doing it if not that would be a good place to start to get your name out. I feel you on the money end I got disabled in 08 and with 8 kids at home my ss check doesnt leave much for the hobby I hope to do some custom stuff since I could do it as I am able. I should have taken up smoking crack I think it would have been cheaper. Also if you are good with acrylic dont limit yourself to the hobby end , collector cases like for footballs, helmets, nascar models are good way to make some cash and opens you up to alot more people.

 

Thats rough, definitely would put a damper on the reefing. The smoking crack part is probably true! Some good ideas with making other things, hadn't really though about it. The other cheap option for sumps which I am not sure of the legalities of it would be purchasing tanks, and cutting glass and inserting baffles. Either way at this point im still in the research phase.

 

why not put together pre-cut kits that can be inserted into standard tanks. LFS (petco) run the $1 per gallon sales. based on standard size tanks, have mutliple configurations and include diagrams and glues/calk. there is the debate that you should not mix glass and acrylic, but i have not had any problems.

 

I agree college doesn't fund my hobby to well. Where are you from , what is your area you would be selling to might be interested if u aren't to far.

 

Upstate Ny, I am also going to be investigating shipping costs.