all right so you guys know that i had to build new filters for the 120 gallon aquariums you
also know that i'm doing things out here in the gallery the way i personally really want to do it
but when it comes to these 120s i not only had to build one not two and not three but four
of these overhead aquarium filters now mind you i've already shown you guys
how to build this method before years ago i did it and then recently i showed you how to do it again
with the uh the planter box that was only about three feet long um i had to build it just to get
by just to put a filter on that tank uh and these tanks are against the wall so i can't have a hang
on the back i don't want anything internal i can't put anything underneath of them like a
sump or canister or whatever because these guys are stacked up so i figured you know knowing me
i'll go with something that's built overhead today i want to show you guys how i got to this point
i still have to do a few things like of course install the media i want to build lids there's
a few other little things that i got to do but i'm waiting on parts however i don't want to
make you guys wait any longer i want to give you a basic idea of just how sexy the aquarium gallery
is about to become i'm doing things out here that i've been wanting to do for the longest time
and i don't care how they rank on youtube or how popular they are and if you guys are anything
like me i know you're gonna love what we're gonna be coming up with with that said i love
building things and and uh tinkering around and fixing things what what what about the dishwasher
what about the dishwasher give me that
what did you just say what about the dishwasher it's been broken for like a month or more
here i told you i would fix it i told you i would fix it look i gotta make don't cut me off of my
videos and do not expose me that i haven't fixed the dishwasher the cur okay my dishwasher is also
broke and i have to replace a valve i tried to fix it and i flooded my kit there used to be flooding
things we currently have a dishwasher though and it's you know okay i'm gonna show you guys how i
how i built these first and foremost the prices of everything have skyrocketed uh
just about a year ago or two years ago the last time i purchased an acrylic sheet that was six
millimeters thick i think i bought it for like 120 150 canadian right now it's going for 340 canadian
um now i built four of these and including the pumps that translate to about a hundred dollars
american mind you you're not buying this and a pump ready to go for a hundred bucks
uh not only are these really nice but they're going to be incredibly capable of filtering 120
gallon aquarium they're seven and a half gallons each they're four feet long six inches wide six
inches tall they're going to fit snugly against the background anyways today i'm going to show
you how i built them and i want to talk about some of the things that we haven't talked about before
i got to flame polish these these are like razor blades right now if you don't uh you know at least
sand the edges of acrylic or use a a propane or map gas torch to to kind of polish the edges which
i haven't gotten to yet these will cut you so i'm going to try to stop holding them as much as i
have been because it's a matter of time before i'm going to be you know diced up okay so full
disclosure i'm not doing a step-by-step tutorial i'm going to just be doing a basic rundown of how
i built these if you want like the all-inclusive tutorials on how to build an acrylic aquarium i've
got countless videos on it i wrote a book on how to do all of this stuff i mean the resources are
there if you really want to do it today i'm just going to show you a basic idea of what
i did now a lot of this might seem complicated or require a tremendous amount of talent none of
these are pretty none of these are look good i could just build things to make them work
and when it comes to aquariums they never look good i just make them hold water they don't leak
the biggest thing when it comes to building an acrylic aquarium or anything that's going to
hold water using six millimeter thick acrylic or less this video is going to be really good for
you guys because this is all just going to come down to the prep work the first thing i like to do
and a lot of people don't do it is remove the protective paper off of it it's just like a
sticky paper that goes on it some people just peel back the edges and i do that for larger
tanks and whatnot but when it comes to these types of things i just tear it all off because i'm going
to have to eventually anyways and a lot of times i don't create too much of a mess mind you we're
going to talk about the prep work for the most part because that is the most important thing
i'm going to show you how to build these without using tools you could have got these cut at the
acrylic distributor or you could have used cut it yourself and if you've got a table saw with a
triple tip carbide tip blade or i'm sorry a triple trip carbide tip blade uh you're laughing you're
going to be able to cut through this acrylic no problem and you don't have to do any surface prep
with routing or scraping or anything like that you can just build it as is electrical tape is
going to save you a ton of money and a ton of stress when it comes to building with a six milli
millimeter thick acrylic or less we're going with the capillary method of fusing the sheets
of acrylic together i've shown you guys how to do the pin method and that's for thicker acrylic
because the cement doesn't tend to get through it completely i start out by prepping the tanks or
prepping the sheets of acrylic removing the tape or removing the paper and then finally
putting the tape down first electrical tape has a tendency not to leave any sticky residue
or anything that you wouldn't want on the tank it comes off and goes back on super simple the thing
that i like about it is watch watch this see that see how stretchy it is these electrical tape is
the poor man's clamps i got clamps but it's for building big tanks like the 375 gallon aquarium
it's not i don't use clamps on this little stuff i use my little poor man's clamps and
you'll see exactly how that works in a second i lay everything out uh the bottom piece i leave
the paper on because a lot of times i overuse the cement and it gets underneath and it might stick
but if the paper is there it's going to protect it so don't mind the paper it eventually comes off
i flip that upside down and i add the paint the tape to the bottom of that bottom sheet
then i flip it over and i'm ready to kind of like build it with tape i put it together and i hold it
together with tape the only thing i'm concerned about is making sure that there's no gaps
at all in between any of the acrylic surfaces that are touching once the shell of these aquariums or
overhead sumps uh are put together i want to put in the baffles now we'll talk about the baffles
here in a second but babel is essentially just uh compartmentalize the sump and in this case
i just went ahead and drilled holes in them that are about a half inch in diameter with a
step drill the beauty of working with acrylic is that if you have tools to work with wood
you can work with acrylic you can use drill bits and table saws and any other type of wood
tooling equipment on acrylic it's absolutely awesome
downside is and the only problem that i have with acrylic is that if you make a mistake
too bad a lot of the times the the mistakes are irreversible or you need some really good tools to
correct it like some really good saws and routers to kind of cut it apart and you know try to put
it back together and i'll explain why here in a moment with the baffles in place i use the tape
to hold it all together and when i want the the pieces to hold together really tight i
just stretch the tape to hold it together tightly that's it really simple now here's something funny
we use acrylic cement and it's technically not a cement but this is how long it's been since i
built anything out of acrylic it's literally all rusted you want to apply the cement with a needle
now if you can't get any needles or get it from a farm supply store that's the best place to go
with a larger gauge needle you can just go to a pharmacy and order a couple of needles that way
and you can inject the cement like that if you are absolutely positive you did all the prep work
properly the edges are straight and or the edges are flat it's all held together properly you're
ready to add the cement that adding the cement is is like the fun part and the easy part everything
else was the more difficult thing when you're adding the cement to it you're just running it
along the edges and what happens is it's wicking into the seams of the acrylic via the capillary
action meaning that it's technically getting sucked in now this won't work for thicker acrylic
it won't go all the way through a lot of times you got to put it on one end and on the other
but what works even better is the pin method i've showed you guys how to do that as well
on six millimeter thick acrylic or less i'm not messing around with anything fancy i'm going to
use the capillary method which is technically the the most amateur way you could do this
but it works every time for me at least as long as the edges are fine
you'll know it's working when the seam turns perfectly clear now tamara was present when
when i did this and as she was watching it what did you say as you described it it's so satisfying
yeah so it's actually is oddly satisfying and these are working with acrylic and that's the best
part is when you are putting the uh the the cement through the seams it is oddly satisfying because
it changes color completely but for me it means that the seam is perfect so it's satisfying to
her because it's completely changing color and it looks like it's going together but for me it means
this is going to work now it's weird that this is even called the cement
because technically it's not really a cement it's more like a solvent but even a solvent
here's how the here's how this actually works and this is what i find fascinating
is this goes on as a water thin liquid it goes into the seams of acrylic and it reacts with the
acrylic it softens it technically it softens the two edges and they fuse together on a molecular
level and then the solvent evaporates like if you were to take rubbing alcohol and have a few drops
within a few seconds if you don't wipe it up it's like gone same thing problem is you only got like
a minute or two before it's too late to make any further adjustments i love saying molecular
so with these guys all together i went ahead and took a hole saw just a wooden hole saw
nothing fancy meant to drill holes in wood and uh installed some bulkheads one's going to be a drain
which is a one-inch drain and the return which pumps water into it is only three-quarter inch
this is more than enough i've also i've also off centered these a little bit so that when
they go on top it doesn't get in in the way of the trim or the bracing i still have to figure out um
how we're gonna hold them on top i'll probably just put a board or something nothing too crazy
but these are gonna look absolutely amazing the way these work though is identical is the way i
showed you before water is gonna come in through here we're gonna have some cotton batting and as
well as some sponge water has to flow up through it and then through these little holes here
now this entire compartment here is going to be packed full of biological media and in here it's
two feet wide i'm sorry it's two feet long here 24 inches by six inches by six inches
it's a massive amount of storage area for biological media now why would the drain area
need to be this big i thought well maybe i want to have some chemical filtration
i made it long enough to accommodate a heater if i ever need to add a heater
uh although i probably won't because i heat the building as opposed to individual aquariums
uh i'd odds are i'll probably just put some more biological media in here maybe i'll put activated
carbon in here or something we'll see what happens but then it drains through the tank
uh it'll be distributed we pump it back up and the cycle just simply continues you guys have
seen how these work in the past works same as any other filter the benefits to this is we have seven
and a half gallons of extra water volume a massive amount of biological media we can have our heaters
we can have uh water polishing all i got to do is remove the the cotton batting from it replace
it you know whenever i want to at once a week every two weeks that sort of thing and that's it
for maintenance no equipment in the aquarium whatsoever besides one pump which i'll put behind
the backgrounds on the 120s the 120s and the 40s are technically the only aquariums that are going
to get backgrounds the the 180s will not so we'll have to get a little creative with how we'll uh
do the filtration there but the filtration that we're going to be building on there
is a method that i came up with um i think it was about 13 years ago i was looking at older pictures
and i've been wanting to filter two aquariums with one filter using this method not this method
but the method i'm going to show you guys here eventually for 13 years you guys are gonna love it
anyways i still have to build the lids we still have to get more plumbing parts we still gotta
pack in the media shoot i even gotta put the tanks in place and drain these guys build the
there's so many more things to do out here and if you guys wanna follow along for all of that
you're not subscribed to this channel yet make sure you do or you're going to miss it
and i'm telling you you're going to miss out on quite a bit i'll see you guys in the next video