reefgeek84 Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I have never looked into a cold water tank and what one would cost, I know they need to have 1" or thicker acrylic due to sweating...but this might be an affordable option... http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/iid/6445 I mean it is not visually appealing as the average the tank, but hey the 130 gallon is less then 1k and they have lots of other sizes, plus if you did an in wall set up, no one would ever know...I know some people are considering setting one of these up, just thought I would offer this...I could be way off though, maybe it is not a ton more for a tank that is out of acrylic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twitterbait Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 That actually looks really good as a cheap option. thanks for the link! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mister crabs Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I have a friend thats an assistant manager at a walmart supercenter here in vegas and his store will be remodeling in a few months. I already put in my dibs on his lobster tank lol. Its somewhere around 40 gallons i think with a built in chiller underneath and all the filtration behind a false wall divider. if i can get it for free i am gonna. its a marineland setup and would be a fun project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WAVES Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 the hard part about a cold water tank is not the expense of the tank, but getting the livestock. I only have sources for 1-2 species of cold water fish (like catalina goby). If you set up a cold water setup, are you just going to go tide pooling or ?? As you saw, Steve Weast dives himself for the items in his tank Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted July 28, 2007 Author Share Posted July 28, 2007 the hard part about a cold water tank is not the expense of the tank, but getting the livestock. I only have sources for 1-2 species of cold water fish (like catalina goby). If you set up a cold water setup, are you just going to go tide pooling or ?? As you saw, Steve Weast dives himself for the items in his tank There are a ton of people that dive like steve does, I am sure Steve could put in touch with people and get stuff for you...Would not be that hard... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
180Bob Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 One question that I have in general about large in-wall tanks is why people don't use plywood and fiberglass for the three sides that you can't see. Seems like it should be alot cheaper than either 1' acrylic or the option shown above. Maybe there is something that I don't understand? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted July 28, 2007 Author Share Posted July 28, 2007 One question that I have in general about large in-wall tanks is why people don't use plywood and fiberglass for the three sides that you can't see. Seems like it should be alot cheaper than either 1' acrylic or the option shown above. Maybe there is something that I don't understand? My guess is because, they are not readily produced...and my best is that most places to do not make them...this might be a question for James at Envision, but I my guess is he has never made one before, and probably would not attempt since the demand is so little...but I could be way off... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoseCityAquarium Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 At our store we tried to keep a wolf eel that we cought, but it was not happy, So we released it back. We do every now and then trade with other divers in Austrailia for cold water fish. We can get blue devil groupers and some rare boxfish flame red, ornate, pineapple fish. These fish are expensive do to great white sharks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy-S Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 These fish are expensive do to great white sharks. What the?? Are you saying small box fish are on the great white food list?? Or are the divers.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoseCityAquarium Posted July 28, 2007 Share Posted July 28, 2007 Its a plug for shark week.. LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acrylics Posted July 29, 2007 Share Posted July 29, 2007 One question that I have in general about large in-wall tanks is why people don't use plywood and fiberglass for the three sides that you can't see. Seems like it should be alot cheaper than either 1' acrylic or the option shown above. Maybe there is something that I don't understand? My guess is because' date=' they are not readily produced...and my best is that most places to do not make them...this might be a question for James at Envision, but I my guess is he has never made one before, and probably would not attempt since the demand is so little...but I could be way off...[/quote'] Most people don't have the skill or inclination to do fiberglass, esp in their homes. Even though it's not *that* difficult, it's a laborious task. I won't allow fiberglass in the shop, it's hard on tooling and the dust gets *everwhere*, this dust makes for bad glue joints in acrylic so I just won't do it. Smaller fiberglass tanks are not commercially viable unless you are going to make a make a mold and a bunch of tanks and this requires a good demand for them at specific sizes. When tanks get to be about 10-15' in length, the viability goes way up and there are a coupla mfrs that do them on a regular basis for public aquariums. If the demand was there for them to do the smaller tanks, they would already be doing them With fiberglass, it's best to have a penetrations located prior to the glassing as "retro-drilling" fiberglass tanks can have "negative" effects. IME, the tank ends up being about 10-12% of the total cost of a project so even saving 20% on a fiberglass tank isn't that great of a savings when you consider that's about 2% of the total cost of the project, and the limited use of them as well as not being able to effectively drill them for bulkheads. FWIW, the pricing for the tanks in the original post are not bad but not a big savings at all over acrylic tanks, even using 1" material. The pricing is actually fairly expensive if you consider you cannot have a continuous viewing window, but that's JMO James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reefgeek84 Posted July 29, 2007 Author Share Posted July 29, 2007 FWIW, the pricing for the tanks in the original post are not bad but not a big savings at all over acrylic tanks, even using 1" material. The pricing is actually fairly expensive if you consider you cannot have a continuous viewing window, but that's JMO James Yeah, I was not sure, since I have never looked into a quote for a 1" thick tank for a cold water set up...If I would only be saving 400-600 bucks on the ABS tanks, then I would rather just go all acyclic... Thanks for all the info. James... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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