DIY tank build w/o plywood?

[Dogbert4pres]

I made a bunch of plywood tanks (110g) for my fish room and have a ton of chopped mat cloth and gallons and gallons of resin left. Has anyone made a tank using a styrofoam core and many layers of cloth/resin? I ask this as those 110g tanks a heavy.... very heavy. It would seem to me to be very doable as sailboats have a foam core.

[dave w]

I made a bunch of plywood tanks (110g) for my fish room and have a ton of chopped mat cloth and gallons and gallons of resin left. Has anyone made a tank using a styrofoam core and many layers of cloth/resin? I ask this as those 110g tanks a heavy.... very heavy. It would seem to me to be very doable as sailboats have a foam core.

 

What type of foam core, polyisocyanurate? That is the stuff they make rmax out of in the building departments. I tried this once but it was a lot of work to rip off the aluminum in order to get the resin to stick. I don't see any problem building a fiberglass sandwich around a foam core. But I'm not sure I see your point, once the tanks are filled you will probably never move them again, and I don't see 110 gallon tanks being very heavy. I don't know what your bracing will be but you probably don't need to use over 1/2" or 5/8" plywood. It shouldn't weigh more than 100 pounds.

[dave w]

I made a bunch of plywood tanks (110g) for my fish room and have a ton of chopped mat cloth and gallons and gallons of resin left. Has anyone made a tank using a styrofoam core and many layers of cloth/resin? I ask this as those 110g tanks a heavy.... very heavy. It would seem to me to be very doable as sailboats have a foam core.

 

After reading again, I see that you mentioned styrofoam. I think the polyester resin will eat the styrofoam, although I'm not positive. Test a small piece and see what happens.

[ctenophore]

My display tank is built like this. 2" thick polyisocyanurate core. It is pretty light for a 550 gallon tank, but it still took 10 half-drunk family members to lift it onto the stand at our Christmas party a few years ago. Unfortunately I have no pics of either the actual fiberglass build or the tank lifting. What is nice is that it is very rigid. I have no top bracing except for a piece of embedded angle iron across the top front for the glass. It is 44" deep which is a decent amount of water pressure.

[Dogbert4pres]

I saw you tank years ago, I think you bought that large water vessel from the LFS near year that day and I followed you back to look at the IBC. You had not put in your sun room yet but looked like you had most of the backend ready. I am thinking of using that polyisocyanurate (albeit at 1/2") to make my frag runs. I bought the stuff to make tanks for dart frogs but figured that it should work considering the water depth would only be say 12".

 

 

 

Thanks