Thanks to Miles' upgrading his basement tank rack, I found myself with a surplus of old aquarium glass. Time for another crazy DIY build. This time around I have my eyes set on an overly complicated fish rack of my own. Taking a hand full of 10g tanks and repairing a panel to get them back in service was too easy, so instead the plan is to break them all down and create a series of 20"x20"x12" (20G) tanks. This will then let me stack another row of narrower tanks above them for an interesting layout that utilizes all the available space.
Some initial sketches and math skills...
I started breaking down the tanks.
Trying to calculate the number of tanks I could make at 12" height and it was only going to yield (x2) of the 20g tanks. Then I realized that if I shorted them to 10" height (17g) I could use the bottom panels and make (x4) tanks.
Thats when I realized that I'm a hoarder! As luck would have it, the (x2) 55g tanks I recently broke down are the perfect size to combine with a 10g. The side panels are 20" x 12", exactly the same as the front and back panels on a 10g. Back to (x4) full size 20g square tanks! Then I thought it was blind luck, but the 55g front/rear panel were exactly the size needed to cut new bottom panels for the build! I was dumbfounded that I wouldn't need to order any custom glass. Thats when this happened...
Yep, turns out that the 55g I thought was only tempered on the bottom, was in fact all tempered glass.
In all honestly, I figured out the panel was tempered before it broke, but i had already scored it, so wrote it off as worthless. There was some part of me that wanted to see it shatter, lol!
Guess I'll be ordering up some 20"x20.25" glass panels from Hemm's in the near future if i can't find some old windows.
Also, if anyone is looking to build a sump, I have all the side panels from the 10g's left over. I may make a couple of 5g tanks, but I've got roughly (x14) 10"x12" panels. They'll fit perfectly into a 10g tank, and should fit sideways into a 20 long, 29g. Let me know.