today we build an octopus aquarium an aquarium with special features that will allow us to not
only highlight their incredible intelligence but their natural curiosities as well and we
got to make it escape proof here's how i built the tank now since i'm using 10 millimeter cell
cast acrylic i went with the pin method of joining the panels using thin pins these slightly elevate
the aquarium so the acrylic cement can actually wick into the entire seam we allow the cement to
slightly soften the acrylic before we pull the pins and secure the seam with a few pounds of
clamping pressure waiting around 30 minutes will allow for enough curing time to move the tank to
do another panel now you're going to also notice i'm using some plywood blocks that i rigged up to
hold the panels in place at a 90 degree angle while i work as well we'll look at those later
i continue to apply the panels until all sides are together then we cement this to the bottom
now i know what you're thinking i'm moving really fast through this tutorial and i'm really just
showing you the basics of the construction because i actually built an identical tank with far better
shots and it's going to be a more comprehensive tutorial and we'll put that out in the future for
right now i just really want to show you this tank and talk about it now for the top bracing
system which i'm going to explain in a second i used a full panel and drilled pilot holes in all
the corners of where i wanted the lid and access panels that i kind of roughed out then a rough cut
with a saw blade to simply get them out of the way i can router these to be pretty later i flipped
the tank over and applied the top brace to the tank in the same manner i did the bottom once the
tank has cured overnight i began routing off any access acrylic that i purposely made sure i would
have so i can have a perfect edge then to give the tank a bit of a more finished look i rounded
the edges finally with a map gas torch i polished them and boy oh boy did this come out beautiful
now i know what you're wondering joy where's all your fish tanks where'd they all go no worries
we all we still have all the fish i just moved them out of the way so i could build a bunch of
really cool things bottom line don't worry about i still have all the fish now as for the tank the
dimensions of it are 32 inches wide 32 inches front to back this is basically a square tank
it's a little dirty it needs to be it's got some dust and stuff like that on it right
now don't worry about that it's abs not a single scratch on this is absolutely beautiful in person
but it's also 16 and a half inches tall making this around 73 gallons which isn't that big
especially for what you might think is a massive octopus we're likely going to keep some of the
smaller species which will do a lot better in a smaller aquarium giving them more sense of
security however just because this is 70 gallons that's not the final gallonage we'll be tying this
into a system that will have a total of almost 200 gallons i know what you want to know though what's
this square for we know this is going to be the access hatch so we'll have to figure out how we
want to do a lid but what the heck is this for and why can't you get into the tank anywhere else well
an octopus is an escape artist i don't want them to be able to get out anywhere and we're going
gonna have to figure out something interesting to uh plumb this tank and filter it but this is
definitely the strongest type of bracing system that you can have on an acrylic aquarium which
is a full brace mind you i can still get into the tank and essentially reach to the back if
i ever needed to so it was very important for me not to have any areas where an octopus can
kind of escape and that had to be a priority so we'll have to figure out a lid here shortly but
again i know what you're wondering what the heck is this big square for well remember back in 2000
remember back in 2008 this was like 11 years ago i built the upside down aquarium i built
an acrylic aquarium that allowed for the fish to swim up through the back panel
these days upside down aquarium fish tower i'm not sure what everybody's calling them these days
but 11 years ago i thought wouldn't it be cool to build an all-in-one now i decided recently i
want to kind of rehash some old things that i've done but bring them up to date and put them into
new builds and when i thought about the octopus aquarium i needed to build him a lookout tower
so i built this small tower rounded the edges off it's dusty
rounded the edges off and rounded the bottoms off this holds about eight gallons of water itself
it's eight inches by eight inches by i think like 28 inches it just goes right in here now mind you
it's going right to the bottom at this point but when we set up and escape this tank we're
going to take some rocks put them underneath the corners so this is elevated like this
then we suck out all the air that's in the tower and water replaces it allowing the octopus
i'm so excited about this allowing the octopus to swim up into it and kind of have a look
maybe we'll put some uh some you know those baby rings in there we're gonna have a ton
of interactive environment for him and it's just going to be absolutely fascinating
to watch what type of octopus likely a common octopus maybe a mimic we'll figure something
out it's not exactly that easy to get a hold of one right now but i do uh i do have a few leads
and it's going to happen luckily i got some time gotta build the stand gotta build filtration gotta
get this up and running and cycled and then of course get in the octopus now this tank is gonna
go right over here in this corner once we build a stand for it and again it's gonna come up to here
um the tower i've already kind of tested it it's going to come up to here it's going to look really
cool but we have a big problem with this tank when i was building it i remembered how much fun and
how interesting and how how satisfying it is to build tanks i haven't built some for quite some
time it feels like anyways i do build stuff behind the scenes and things that don't necessarily make
the video but i got an itch and i wanted to build another tank so i did but then i wanted to build
another tank that was even cooler than this tank that will blow your minds that'll be the first
type uh that i've ever seen cause i built that too well the really cool tank isn't built yet but
all the materials are here and i got to put it together and uh it's incredibly complex
and difficult and i think i'm just being a chicken but if you want to find out about
all these builds see the planning process the discussion to it anything like that get some
behind the scenes videos talk to me live join the discord et cetera consider joining the membership
of this channel you're going to ruin every future video for a while i think those guys
know the next three months worth of videos so again this is going to be elevated up a
bit and it's going to be coming out of the water probably somewhere as close to this maybe half out
and the octopus will be able to come up we'll secure some heavy rings up here so you can
kind of grip on to it explore everything it's going to be an absolutely fascinating tank and
if you want to follow along for the ride the next thing we got to do is build the filtration
we also have to build a stand lighting figure out the lids and we'll likely do that in one of the
next videos the next video i'm probably going to show you the other tank build that i just did that
i'm really excited about and uh if you guys want to join me for this ride make sure you subscribe
if you're not already hope you enjoyed the video and join me on my new journey of joey's building
what he really wants and it's going to be really cool see you guys in the next video
you