Hi, everybody Joey here again
And welcome back so today marks the first video of a five-part series on how I built my office aquarium now
This is a really interesting
Build that I know a lot of you are really going to enjoy because there's a lot of unique
Aspects to it of course I built everything for it, but in this series
You're going to see things like how I built the aquarium itself how I built the filtration
the stand lighting how I set it up all the equipment how it all works and of course the stocking and
Aquascaping another thing about this build and really do it yourself in general
Is that nobody in the world has a system like this?
But I'm going to show you how I did it
so you could potentially build it yourself or
Simply get some inspiration and use bits and pieces to apply to your own [built] this build headed a lot of unique
Challenges and obstacles that I had to overcome yet the final outcome is actually one of my favorite
builds out of the last Few Years now if you've been following me for any amount of time you'll remember the
375
gallon
Acrylic tank filled that we just did you'll also remember that after I built this tank there was a lot of spare acrylic left over
Now some of that acrylic I used to build my planted aquarium
Which is set up and running right now?
And I know a what if you want to see that build and it's coming if you follow me on Facebook
I actually announce the exact date that that build is coming out. So if you're not following me on Facebook
I suggest you do this is really easy for me to give you updates like that now
Let's focus on the office tag build you'll notice that my office is rearranged tremendously
And it is I had to do quite a bit of renovations to make this happen
I wasn't planning on it
but to
accommodate this new build I had to and I gotta tell you I'm entirely pleased that I did in the future at some point when
All these series comes out and you see all these tanks that are now in this room
I want to do an office tank tour so you can see everything that I see
I don't know exactly when that tour will come out, but if you're subscribed to this channel
you'll of course get a notification when it does so like I said there was a lot of scrap acrylic left over from the
375 Gallon Tank, it was a lot of odd dimensions of acrylic
But has some really good pieces, and I had to get creative with it. I had a number of options yet
Let's just go ahead and watch what I mentioned before so I can bring you guys up to speed now speaking of getting creative
I still have no idea
What I want to do
All of this scrap acrylic now I'll remind you this piece is three-quarter inch and these two pieces of three-quarter-inch
Cell cast acrylic this piece here is six feet long two feet wide these two pieces here are
eight feet long in One foot wide
These are some pretty
sizable pieces of Scrap acrylic from the 375 Gallon Tank built
I should also mention that out of the scrap acrylic from that build I also already built that planted aquarium Cube
We'll take a look at that minute though, so I'd like to do one of two things here
I'd like to build some tanks that are either interesting or very useful or hopefully the both
so we actually talked in the past where I was going to build a tank that would line the wall of my
Desk, and it would run the length of my desk however
It would only be about eight inches front to back 12 inches tall and then run the length of the tank
[I] think that would make for a really interesting tank and obviously I would get to see it all the time
However in the live streams on Facebook that I've done some of you have even suggested doing a large tall
Column tank for example with the Scrap acrylic
I could do a six foot tall tank
But it would only be 12 inches
around on each side that would be pretty fun and interesting to see but I don't think it would be that useful and or
Practical for stalking although I've been curious to see what you guys to do with it
last but not least there's the more practical approach and
Simply taking the acrylic and building some cube tanks with the amount of Kerlik that I have here I could build 5
Cubed tanks all of which would be 12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches what I would do with all five
I don't know then I can do something more rectangular like three tanks that are
24 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches or potentially a mixture of Cube tanks and rectangular tanks
So I'd like to hear your guys thoughts on those four options or perhaps you have another idea
Given the dimensions that I have here again. I'm gonna let you guys boat and a pop-up should appear right now
I'll wait to see what you guys think before
we move any further with this so I let you guys vote on what I should do with it and
Seventy-four percent of you said that I should build the long desk tank the problem
there is I kind of miss measured how things could go you see the desk itself is 90 inches long and
60 inches wide it's actually a u-shaped guest so it goes all around here now
I couldn't build a 90 inch long tank because if there wasn't enough acrylic to do
So I guess I could have but the tank would have only been about eight inches wide and eight inches taller
There's no way. I was gonna waste the acrylic on that although that might have been a pretty neat tank however
I wanted something more practical I also didn't want to build it 60 inches long because I could only build it 12 inches wide in
12 inches tall would be a relatively small tank. I wanted to get the biggest tank possible
I wanted to get the biggest tank possible out of this
But yet, keep it long and narrow mainly because there's not really tanks out there like that
And I wanted to get creative with the stalking although
I knew [exactly] what I wanted to keep right from the beginning so what I ended up doing
Was taking that long piece that was [6] feet long and 2 feet wide I cut it right down the center that gave me two?
Pieces that were six feet long and one foot wide this would serve as the front and the back of the actual tank
Then I took one of those longer 8-foot pieces that were
18 feet long by One feet wide and I cut [that] into three pieces one that would be six feet long and the others would
be one foot long each
The longer piece would serve as the bottom of the tank and the 21 foot pieces would serve as the sides of the tank
So this would end up being a tank
That's six feet long one feet wide and one foot tall which gives me about 45
Gallons now this size aquarium is more practical to the majority [of] my viewers
I know many of you are not going to be able to build or have any ambitions to build these massive tanks
So I know this office tank will inspire many more of you than these ones would although these ones are pretty cool themselves
with that tank
Decided though it still leaves me with a piece of acrylic that's eight feet long and [1] feet wide and remember this is
Three-quarter inch cell cast acrylic with that extra sheet I'm going to build another tank with it
And I have a good [idea] for it till this tank being 6 feet long one feet wide and one foot tall it would look
Awkward going on the 90 inch length of the desk and it would jut out if I went the 60 inch length of it
So I decided I'd moved the desk out of the way and I'd expose a large area on the wall
You'll probably remember the mirror that I glued to the wall previously was there
And I had to remove that and I mostly broke it and ripped apart the wall
But that's fine because the stan covers it anyway
But this new gap in the wall leaves you with a nice 80 inch to work with however now
I'm taking up a massive amount of real estate in a relatively small office where I value storage tremendously?
So I really had to take that into consideration when I was building the stand and that's where this build gets really interesting
But we'll get to that in a couple [videos] so with that all out of the way and with you guys brought up to speed
With why I made these decisions. Let's talk about how I built this tank again. This tank was six feet long
One foot wide and One foot tall made out of three-quarter-inch
Cell cast acrylic now given its width and height I knew automatically. I'm not going to need any bracing
so this was going to be a
Bracelet tank
Which looks really good once done to start off cutting up the acrylic is pretty simple I use the 10 inch 80 tooth carbide tip
Blade now given that. We're using a three-quarter inch material this means that the
Welding war cementing method has to apply to its thickness
Now typically you guys have seen me use a method called
Called the capillary method now that method is really simple and easy to do with thinner acrylic
You just have to put two pieces together and run some cement along the scene
Capillary action
Wicks the acrylic into the seam and it softens it and cements it together however on three quarter inch
It's too wide to be able to do that, and it doesn't wake in far enough
You can try to get it at both sides
But it just ends up making a mess and the horrible scene yep the capillary method is tremendously easy
However will be applying the pin method to this aquarium the first thing you always have to do is peel back the protective paper
That's on the acrylic. You can peel a couple inches back and tape it back, or just rip it right off
We do this because we if any cement gets on that protective paper
It makes a mess of the acrylic
And it's easier to actually see what you're doing now because we're using the pin method
I didn't really need to prepare the edges as well as I normally would you see when building an acrylic aquarium the edges are
Everything if your edges are not flat and true
You're going to have a horrible scene
Even with using the blade that I use you can you can tend to get some saw marks within it and you have to remove?
Those however the pin method allows the acrylic to melt more before you actually fuse them together
Which means all of these lights saw marks are basically going to turn into mush
And then cement together you'll see what I mean in a minute now putting an aquarium
Together while using the pin method on larger aquariums is much different than putting a smaller aquarium
or are even a larger aquarium using the capillary method using the capillary method is very similar to
Say putting together a glass aquarium yet using the pin method
We approach it much differently however this tends to take a lot longer
But results are usually a lot better you want to start off with either the front or the back panel laying it down
Then take [one] of the ends and brace it you can use a number of things to square off this piece and hold it there
Personally I just rigged up a square with using supply would this holds it together for me
And I don't have to worry about it being level or square or even have to hold it does it all for me
Next comes the pins you want to find the smallest pins possible these are tiny little Bobby pins
but you can use something like
acupuncture pins or even small sewing pins
Personally I like to use ones that have a little nub on the end so that when I pull them out I have something to
grip on two pins need to be approximately every two eight to [twelve] inches it really depends on the length of the tank that you're
Cementing together but for this one
I just used two pins because it's only a 12 inch length if I only used one it's gonna wobble back and forth
So obviously I need to use to now the way this works
Is those pins slightly elevate the acrylic away from each other then we take a syringe?
Or an applicator bottle filled with weld on for well, don for is a popular
Acrylic cement using the syringe or applicator bottle we start squirting in the weld on for into the scene now
I actually own a router so I like to have a tiny bit of acrylic
overhanging and the reason I do that is because if my cuts are off by even a little bit it's
Going to ruin the tank so what I prefer to do is move the panel in slightly and then route it off later
I'll show you more on that in a minute once we've filled up the entire scene with weld on for we wait
Approximately 90 to 120 seconds or a minute and a half to two minutes
It's best to actually time this out if you have somebody with you
especially if you've never done this before
Personally for me. I use my fingers. I keep touching the cement and waiting until when I pull my fish apart
There cement in it almost like a cobweb
Now the cement by itself won't actually do that its water thin and it evaporates off your finger after a few seconds however
What's creating that webbing is the acrylic is softening, and that's when you know it's ready at this point
We pull the pins you do need clamps you want to clamp it together?
You don't need a tremendous amount of force
But you do want a firm clamp this just simply
Squeezes it together and ensures you get a bubble free scene now because we've softened the acrylic
We fused it on a molecular level and that's why a well-put-together acrylic aquarium
Technically doesn't have any seams now. We wait now, technically after about 20 [minutes]
You can start moving this around pulling the clamps off and that sort of thing however. I highly suggest you wait until the next day
Why it guarantees the Seimas fused together properly and cured?
However, it actually takes a full seven days for the cure to reach one hundred percent strength after 24 hours though
It's up to about eighty percent strength if you pull your clamps too soon
or you start moving it around you run a high risk of
Ruining that seem introducing bubbles or simply just making a mess out of the tank and the thing with acrylic is
While it's really easy to put together it is unforgiving to mistakes
You make a mistake
And there's no taking effect unlike a glass aquarium for example if you mess up putting that together
Wait till it cures. Take it apart and do it again with an acrylic aquarium
There's no turning back now that we have one end on we can move to the [other] we literally do the exact same
Thing as we [did] for the first scene again wait to 24 hours
And then we can move on now it gets kind of tricky
we have to flip the tank upside down and
Cement both ends to the other side however once you flip this contraption over
Depending [on] how long the span of this is and how thick your acrylic is it's going to bow
Now bowing isn't a big deal with acrylic
It has a high tensile strength really difficult to actually snap it
But the problem is is that when they bows in the middle it pushes out the ends and we can't have [that] happening
So when cutting up your acrylic make sure that you cut up a spare piece of plywood or would the same width as the end
Panels so that when you flip this over, you can stick that in between and it stops it from boeing now
You can do the exact same thing
We did to the other sides to the bottom sides
Again square them off put the pins in apply the cement wait a minute and a half to two minutes and pull the pins
Pulling the pins by hand is not advisable because they are actually stuck [in] there pretty good
So get a pair of pliers or vise grips or or a tool of some sort?
What that will help you pull them out? Just make sure that you brace the side when you're actually pulling it in now
This thing's starting to look like a fish tank
The last panel is the bottom panel now as long as the rest of this was squared up even though with this is the most
Cementing it's actually the easiest because all the hard work is done
you just have to put it in place prop the pins under it get some clamps in place and ready and
Start cementing now. This is technically 14 feet of cementing
I have to do and I should have had somebody there with me that could have pulled the pins
Because cementing this will take longer than two minutes
It will probably take me three to five minutes to actually cement the whole thing
And in doing so I might not be able to pull the pins in time
Which will potentially?
lead to a scene with bubbles in it or one that is not perfectly clear why because the acrylic is starting to soften up and
Oxygen gets into it
So I highly advise you if you are building a big tank to have somebody there with you that can all they have to do
Is pull the pins right behind you after a certain time for me?
I figured I could move fast enough to get to them in time which I did and I kind of lucked out however
I was really pushing the limit [here]
After cementing the entire bottom in plays and pulling the pins and tightening the clamps I waited another 24 hours
Now one thing that you'll notice is that I put the tank up on some wood blocks
I only did this so I can actually get my clamps under it the downside to building a big tank using the pin method is
That you do need a lot [of] clamps luckily for me
I buy them up when I see him on sale the next day
I came back with my router and routed off all of the additional edges now
I used a double flute
Quarter-Inch router bit and just ran the entire perimeter of all of the tank now the tank is essentially
It's time to polish it
now with thinner acrylic
[this] is really easy, you could take a propane torch or a map gas torch and
Simply flame the Edges and it will polish them to be crystal clear however on the thicker acrylic
It's really difficult to accomplish this
Why because the acrylic is just so thick it takes a lot longer to flame polish it and while doing so well
Acrylics actually flammable and the longer you have to flame polish the higher chances it has of catching on fire
Usually it's not [going] [to] catch on fire, but you will find that you burn more than you polish however. There's a lot of plastic
Polishers out there. I prefer to use novus products simply because it's available to me. There's a line up of three of them
I've actually shown you guys how to remove scratches from aquariums in past videos
including glass and acrylic aquariums, and when removing scratches from an Acrylic aquarium
I showed you how to use novus novus two is fine scratch removal and Nova's three is
Heavy scratch removal now you can use a combination of three [and] two?
but most likely you'll only need two all you have to do is apply a bit to the acrylic you intended polish or
Apply it to a buffing wheel and buff it out. It actually buffs it out really quick however
It can make a bit [of] a mess however after using it you go from having a scene
You can't see through to having a [crystal-clear] [scene]
Again the downside to it is it's a bit messy so as you can see here although the seams are clear
There's still lots of polish everywhere
I don't worry about that until I'm ready to remove the protective paper anyways, so that was it
That's how I built the office tank again just to summarize the tank is six feet long one foot wide one foot tall being about
45 gallons and capacity and again one of my new favorite tanks next week
We're going to move on to how I built the filtration for this aquarium
If so far you're interested in this build or are looking forward to the filtration
Portion of this build or anything else that I have planned for and you're not a subscriber
I invite you to do so so you don't miss out on any of this
I should also mention that if you are interested in building your own aquariums whether it be glass acrylic, or plywood I?
Did cover them in far more detail in my book the ultimate do?
Handbook for the do-it-Yourself [of] queres
And you can get your copy at the king of diy com where it comes in ebook as well as soft cover
Version anyways, hope that you guys enjoyed today's video
I also wanted to thank you for watching and I will see you guys next Sunday for part two of the office tank build series