440g Starphire Custom Dropoff Reef Tank

Beautiful "wood"!

Would you please share ordering info? I know you said pressed tile, but how do I tell Lowes I want what you have?

Thanks,
 
Sure, nobody. We went with the special order peel-and-stick vinyl plank in hand-scraped walnut. It's made by Novalis, but Lowe's rebrands it as one of their in-house brands (Select something-or-other). They'll try to sell you some flooring adhesive; DON'T buy it. If you use any additional adhesive it will void the lifetime warranty, and besides, you don't need it. Just get some floor primer (about $9 for one gallon, it's very thin and will cover about 300 sq. ft.) and the planks stick beautifully. As you stick each plank take a moment to walk on the edges and you don't need a 100 lb roller, either.
 
Your project is coming along beautifully. What a fun thread to follow. Has anyone started making the glass tank yet, or do you want them to have the stand first to assemble upon?
 
Thanks, Marc. No, no glass cut yet. I'm gonna wait until the steel frame is welded and powdercoated, then I'll get more precise measurements at that point and have the glass CNC cut to fit. The last thing I want to do is have the glass cut and then find that it's 1/8" oversized with welds and powdercoating in the way, you know? Plus, with the glass being siliconed into the frame, much like a plywood tank, I really can't have any assembly done until it's all welded, anyway. :)
 
Do you plan to put plywood on the steel frame, or is the plan to silicone the glass to the steel? I'm thinking you need this to have a little give, and I don't even know how to figure the stress tolerances of this once water is in it. I wonder if the guys at Marineland would be willing to run the numbers for a fee for you? I doubt they'd want to build it.
 
No, it's being siliconed directly to the steel, much like a large-scale commercial aquarium. And no, you don't want it to give, to do so introduces shear forces upon the silicone seal. Ideally, you want to silicone directly against the most stable outer surface as possible, so that the only force being acted upon the silicone is compressive force, where the silicone acts merely as a packer and seal, rather than being held in tension or shear, as most silicone and glass aquariums are. Utilizing silicone in this manner is almost incalculably stronger (assuming a strong outer surface, i.e.- strong welds and well-built structure, to seal against) than utilizing silicone as an adhesive. Not only that, but then your safety factor relies on the strength of the glass between the steel frames, rather than upon the strength of the silicone bond (either in tension or in shear) to retain the shape of the glass and keep it from reaching the point of failure due to deflection. Remember, when calculating required glass thickness, the biggest issue is bending stress, so supporting the top and bottom of the pane of glass reduces (almost to the point of removal) that bending stress at the point where it's most likely, i.e.- the top and bottom shear-held silicone bonds. Really, the only issue relative to the use of metal for the frame is the differential linear coefficient of expansion between glass and most metals, especially steel. To offset this in larger joints (i.e.- those longer than 1 meter on their longest edge, or a bit over 2 meters in this case) the thickness of the silicone seal must be changed to allow linear expansion without the fear of compressive failure. Assuming that plate glass has a linear coefficient of expansion of ~5.0 x 10^6 in/in degrees F, and steel has a coefficient of linear thermal expansion of ~7.3 x 10^6 in/in degrees F, allowing 2-3mm per meter of joint length (i.e.- 5mm seal along the large side plates, and 3mm along the front plate) will allow the silicone to take up the linear expansion differences without failure of the silicone seal.
 
@fjr_wertheimber wrote:
Assuming that plate glass has a linear coefficient of expansion of ~5.0 x 10^6 in/in degrees F said:
uhhh [smilie=wait.gif]
<hr class="bbcode_rule" />
i fell dumb, lol
Click to expand...
 
Sounds very interesting. In the end, this is going to come down to the skill of the builder and the tolerance of the glass, especially the inner corner area of the step down.
 
LOL I just had a guy over on Reef Central post (in response to my structural analysis of the steel frame construction): "As a Structural engineer your previous post made a lot of sense, do you have an engineering background?" I guess that means I got it right... [smilie=rock.gif]

Oh, and Khoa, the other awesome thing is the cost... WAY way way cheaper than laminate or hardwoods... (about 1/3 to 1/5 the cost, even less if you count the cost of having hardwoods professionally installed...)
 
"Assuming that plate glass has a linear coefficient of expansion of ~5.0 x 10^6 in/in degrees F, and steel has a coefficient of linear thermal expansion of ~7.3 x 10^6 in/in degrees F, allowing 2-3mm per meter of joint length (i.e.- 5mm seal along the large side plates, and 3mm along the front plate) will allow the silicone to take up the linear expansion differences without failure of the silicone seal."


Makes sense, and it's good info to have. BUT like Marc said, a skilled builder will make all the difference with this. Who's building this aquarium for you?
 
The metal will be fabricated by Metalink out of Austin, the glass will come from Glasscages. Although, I'm still waiting on a couple of commercial glass companies to get me quotes on sheets of 3/4" LIG delivered, so if the cost delivered is less than the cost of pickup from Glasscages then I'll just have them drop ship it (yikes, "drop ship" is a scary term when referring to glass... LOL) directly to me. I'm going to be inserting the glass within the tank myself (with some help from some friends to pick up/position the panes due to weight), and doing the silicone work itself. Really, for complexity of construction, it's no different from the hundreds of plywood builds out there (albeit, just repeating the steps for multiple panes), so I think I should be just fine (I know, famous last words... LOL).
 
Good luck with glass cages I tried to order their low iron glass panels to for my tank. They eventually had to refund my money and went with a local glass company


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