# My big DIY tank debriefing (finally!) <Dial up.. beware! Lazy readers beware too>



## Cirith Ungol (Apr 17, 2006)

(The long text is no nessessary read, just describing the entire process, errors and successes)

Here it is... the result of a small project I wanted to chip through during the christmas holidays... and which took a few months longer to complete (until yesterday).

22 new tanks are finally finished... though being done I realized I need 4 more tanks... I'll build them when I need them though. The tanks I built now where in great part built ahead of time, so I don't have T's to fill most of them. Many of the animals are still too small, some have died during this time and some where just planned and built because I had the space for them.

First up:
This is what I envisioned... it didn't turn out like that as you'll see. The tanks crossed out in red are purely imaginary, a concept so to speak. The six tanks not crossed out are actually there and where my initial stock of home made tanks. Those I had built about a year earlier and I learned a lot while building them. For example that 1.5mm plexi is a lot cheaper than glass. That the plexi is a lot more customizable but that it doesn't hold together well with silicone. They still stand but I'm skeptical that they will hold together forever.






So... I had to make some changes. For this big a project I had to go as cheap and practical as possible. The wood was to expensive, eventhough nice looking. It didn't either hold together well with silicone. My new sollution after a lot of brainstorming was this:






Yes, steel bands. They proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Cutting them to size was no problem. Bending individual corner pieces was no problem either. But actually hammering edge frames out of them was... no fun at all to put it mildly. On the contrary. The frames would always turn out warped (because the holes in the bands make straight hammering and bending impossible) so every single frame piece had then to be bend straight. Now imagine trying to bend an L-profiled piece of metal! If you apply pressure to one side, the other automatically comes out by the same amount, unless you basically use 3-4 hands applying pressure to the counterpoints too (or if you go at it with a great deal of patience). At times I'd apply too much pressure to it collapsing the entire frame piece and then having to bend it straight again from some very rediculously looking angle. 

Well... But once they were kinda straight the problems weren't over. The prototype tank would turn out to look a complete mess: I had the very practical idea of riveting these bands to the plexi. Rivets hold (IF THEY ARE LONG ENOUGH!) pretty well. If they are too short, the rivet pulls through both plexi and metal and you have to manually drill the rivet head out of the frame piece. No fun at all! In one case the head pulling through the plexi completely messed up the plexi, I had to fix it by cutting it into shape again.

About the big mess I mentioned earlier - Those DIY bent L-profile bands looked straight enough so I tried applying them to all sides of the prototype tank. They were supposed to be the fundament to the tanks stability and shape. But they weren't: the tank ended up a competely warped mess and there was a lot of tension on it so there was no way I could simply manually bend or break it into shape after riviting on all the profile bands! 

The bands where waaaay off for the kind of precission I needed for it to become a functional tank and the rivets pulling the bands and plexi together bent subsequently the plexi totally out of shape! I was this close to scrapping the entire project.

I had to come up with something else. ...Complete idea purge and a completely new start at everything... Making it simpler was the only way to go!

It took some time and thinking but I decided to go all plexi + bands + rivets + (and this is it: ) hot glue! (Not silicone!)

(The hot glue of choice: Industrial hot glue (stores more energy, longer staves), comming out of a full power 80W HG gun. If you have anything lower than 45W, throw it away, the glue will hold until you stop looking - IMHO)

Now I'd only apply the L-profile bands to the lid, to keep it steady and escape proof (rivited ofcourse). In order to NOT have the rivets with the "out of shape L-profiles" bend the lid out of shape I did a smart thing: I HOT GLUED the profile pieces to the lid before riveting - thus eliminating all warps they carried with them. After doing that the lids ended up without tension, warps or other! (Oh happy day!  )
Here's what I'm talking about (the lid on the photo shows no hot glue between the profiles and the plexi - it's the only one that could be saved before changing strategy):






You can see a space between the rivets and the steel profile egde - that's where the tank wall is kept in place so it can bend neither in nor out, making the tank safer.

The rest of the tank would be hot glued together in its entirety.

Now... I wanted both a removable lid and sliding doors. Trying to keep it cheap I had to build the door sliders myself too. Obviously I had to remember making the top slider deeper than the bottom one so that the doors could be removed. Making the sliders out of the same bands as presented earlier was no less of a challenge but once I figured it out it was at least pretty straight forward.

Here you can see the bottom slider of a tank, including the lock holding the doors in place. The lock can only be pulled out, not be pushed out from the inside and since it's made of piano wire it sits pretty tight and can not fall off by itself either.






On the picture above you also see the rivets, plus plastic shining through the holes of the metal band. The plastic you can see there is what holds the doors up to the right height to create the bottom-slider-door-groove .

Next picture:
Top slider, a currently open feeding port, lid held above tank wall, and the holes on the top drilled into the wall are for extra airflow (I get into that a little later).






You can see a groove in the feeding port, that's where the edge of the lid sinks in when the lid is put on.

I bent hooks to hold the lid on safe and tight. Shown in the next two pictures:











They are riveted to the tank wall as you can see and again being piano wire - they pack quite a punch.

So, airflow. As already seen the tanks have top ventilation provided by the holeplate (I had 2 large sheets which I just cut to size). Other than that I have hidden all the other ventilation in most tanks. Here's a pic of what the ventilation actually is in one of those tanks (vent in red, ignore the red plastic in the background, I cover that later.) :






The main vent is still provided by the hole plate in the top, but for increased airflow I drilled extra holes all arround the tanks lid, and above and below the doors. The red lines indicate where the tank is untight, thus letting in air anyway, without me having to do anything about it.

Here a view on the inside of the door sliders:






What I'm pointing out are the large holes (about 7mm and 4mm diameter) in the top door sliders. I glued them shut from the inside by glueing strips of plastic over them. I did that since the holes would have been exposed to the inside of the tank otherwise. They would have been a leg snagging hazard for a curious T, and even a very large individual would obviously have been able to push a leg through the larger holes, possibly getting stuck. The holes in the bottom sliders are basically closed up by the doors, so no need for adjustment there.

Another frontal shot with an open feeding port and lid on.






The tank I've presented up until now is a type designed for a medium sized ground dweller with slight digging ambitions (Brachypelma for example).


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 17, 2006)

Here is another type of tank, this one is for medium sized, ground dwellers with no wish to dig:











The next tank is for genic/aureostriata size with the possibility to either let it dig or to extend the tank to a twin level setup. It's also a corner design which turned out a bit tricky as I had to fill out whide gaps in the front with hot glue since my calculations where a bit off. (As you can see in all tanks, I've put a big emphasis on not making them too high. The ground level in every single tank is supposed to always follow the bottom of the bottom door slider. That is to hopefully prevent injoury from falling.)










Below you also see the drilled ventilation (always at least three way, in order to improve airflow).











Next up, the arboreal tanks with custom frontal ventilation holes:





Backside with normal vent holes:





And four of the six in a row:






Next up the digger tanks. A much simpler design. The ventilation is drilled so deep down that it even serves as drainage in times of flooding  (Sorry for the bad pic) The red plastic you see there is sheet plastic which I'll use to cover up the exposed side of the digger tanks).





Those tanks only have a sliding top, hold in place by the piano wire braces that span the lid (a bit hard to see I agree).





Here you see the alternate lid (the maintenance lid with two differently sized feeing ports):





I made that extra lid because... it's safer pushing that one in than having a lividum run about where it doesn't belong... and it's easy too .
The sliders for those tanks were improvised. I cut them off the edges of candy boxes shown below. I got a U-profile out of those egdes as you can see:






And lastly the blondi tank (currently prepped for one of my corns, but the blondi will eventually become its queen):















Another custom ventilation seen here:





The front lock of the blondi sliding doors (2mm piano wire...again):






BEFORE (the corn snake boxes on top are gone by now):





AFTER:
And that's what it looks like in perspective (the left hand shelf custom built for the blondi tank):
















I can't believe that this ordeal is finally over. Now I only have to build a flat shelf for the 6 digger tanks, add those 4 extra tanks that are still unbuilt and then... well... I ONLY have to build another large snake tank and then I'm done... for this year  

Material for 22 tanks: 
35m of metal band
1100 rivets
7 sheets of 2x1m 1.5mm plexi
20 staves of industial hot glue
20 bottle caps
ca. 8m of 1.5mm - 2mm piano wire
15 plastic candy boxes (for sliding edgdes on digger tanks)... (Free!)

Price total (excluding all tools) about $400 (cheap but a lot of work!)

Yours truely Cirith

Reactions: Like 1


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## Gigas (Apr 17, 2006)

those are amazing, im up for getting this as a sticky, there should be a sticky for this kind of stuff, making ur own tanks etc, well done dude


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## Hedorah99 (Apr 17, 2006)

wow. Thats awesome Cirith. Thanx for sharing, that should prove a great resource for everyone on the boards. By the way, is that Frank Shamrock slamming the hell out of someone on your avatar?


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## jwasted (Apr 17, 2006)

Wow! those look good. I know that was alot of work for you. Looks like you got alot done for the T's.


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## Becca (Apr 17, 2006)

Very cool, I especially love the corner shelf tanks.


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## Scott C. (Apr 17, 2006)

Hello Cirith,
Those corner tanks are really nice. They all look great. Congrats! That looks like a whole lot of work.


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## RVS (Apr 17, 2006)

Awesome enclosures!:clap: 
Like black metal? Ha.


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## Lorgakor (Apr 17, 2006)

Holy crap! Thanks for that Cirith! My husband mentioned that he would be up for building me some tanks, I am definitely going to print this out and give it to him, those are really wonderful enclosures. I love the corner ones. 
Thanks for posting this!:clap:


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 17, 2006)

Thanks all! It feels good to get some appreciation for ones work after having been at it so intensly and for so long  

Hedora - it's Tito doing the slam

RVS... how could you tell?


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## Scolopendra55 (Apr 17, 2006)

Very nice indeed!!


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## ErikH (Apr 17, 2006)

Pretty cool.  It looks like it was alot of work, but I am sure it was well worth it!


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## edesign (Apr 17, 2006)

i believe I have been inspired


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## becca81 (Apr 17, 2006)

Ok, I'm sure you already know this, Jens, but you ROCK!  Those are fabulous!  :clap: 

Hmm.. I have the summer off.. sounds like a great project...


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## Sheri (Apr 17, 2006)

I'm glad I finally got to see the pics after hearing about the frustrations for...

months. 

Awesome Jens! Link to this thread from the sticky enclosures thread!


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## Thoth (Apr 17, 2006)

*Now I proudly Present.*

Again Jens you have earned the coveted MacGyver Award for creative tank design and innovative use of piano wire, not just for hitmen anymore.


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## Gigas (Apr 17, 2006)

Thoth said:
			
		

> Again Jens you have earned the coveted MacGyver Award for creative tank design and innovative use of piano wire, not just for hitmen anymore.


 LMAO i second that motion, classic


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## Ewok (Apr 17, 2006)

Thoth said:
			
		

> Again Jens you have earned the coveted MacGyver Award for creative tank design and innovative use of piano wire, not just for hitmen anymore.
> 
> 
> I third the motion lol


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## Ewok (Apr 17, 2006)

Gigus said:
			
		

> LMAO i second that motion, classic


you guys watch macgyver in the UK?


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 18, 2006)

Thank you all :worship:  

MacGuyver eh? Second season!! Wow!  



Some more words of advice, it seems that this has inspired some of you -
IF you wanna go with steel bands then they are gonna be the main problem during building. The holes look symetrical, but if you actually cut off two longer pieces and hold them on top of eachother, you'll see that the holes often won't line up 100%. So you'll often have do drill through them before use (riveting).

If you want to make L-profile corners or lid frames: Go to some workshop and spend the extra money to have them bent for you! They'll use a machine to do the work and that way they'll come out straight, not like inspired by bananas. Hammering them took a lot of time and effort and I only did it in the end because I'm completely nuts and because at times my tenacity can approach the insane (in cases of DIY). 

If you want to rivet your tanks - for gods sake see to it that the rivets are at the *absolute least* 5mm longer than the thickness of the material you want to rivet. 7mm is even better. Drilling out rivet heads because the rivet pulled through isn't as hard as I thought but it gets pretty messy.

If you want to build a great numer of tanks from plexi - check first if it is thin plexi (I used 1.5mm material). Then also, check the price against glass - far from all get plexi at the price I do (2x1m for about $35-$37). But what is almost the most important - calculate every single piece you need, draw it up on sketches how you are going to cut every piece out of the big sheets, draw those onto the plexi proior to cutting and don't cut before you're done. Measuring and drawing a new piece onto the plexi when you have a home cut egde is going to make it all very unprecise and you'll end up with pieces that don't match up with your calculations!

Measure the big sheets before going ahead also - A sheet may be marked as 2x1m but it may just as well be 2.01x1.005m which can give you a little extra or (as in my case) might even allow you to put one extra cut in - getting out one more piece than expected.

For the 1.5mm plexi I used metal shears. Mine were angled, not straight. That means they look like scissors where the cutting egdes are at an angle from the handles. Important: If you are using those - observe that one of the flowing egdes comming form the cutting egdes is at an extreme angle compared to the other one. That means that the short stretch of plexi you just cut by pressing the handles together once, has to pass the extremely angled flowing egde before you can push the shears forward through the material. That extreme angle might make the plexi bend to such a degree that it breaks! I had a handfull of breaks before I figured out how to cut it relatively safely with my shears, but I would rather have gone with straight shears (!) since there is not such a high risk of breakage.

Use a new and sharp drill for drilling the plexi. This might sound like an odd suggestion because of plexi being such a comparatively soft material, but if you use a blunt one you'll often end up sliding over the plexi, thus scraping it.
Use a different drill for the metal - you don't wanna end up blunting your plexi drill. 

If you wanna go with feeding ports - Get bottles with stuff you LIKE! Not with stuff where the lids are of the best use... or you could pour the contents into the drain  

Door sliders - An extremely nerdy sollution on my part. I made it for the looks, the challenge and for the experience. I'd recommend all who don't nessessarily want them to be metal and looking like mine to go and buy normal plastic door sliders. If you aim to use them with thin plexi do this:

You'll most likely get hold of sliders for glass, with a W profile: "LL|" 
Cut off one "L" so you end up with an "L" and "L|" (An L and a U)
Then, use the "L|" profile as the slider.
The remaining "L" profile can also be used. If you plan the lower tank front a little higher you can hot glue it directly to it like this:

L| <-
L|
L|
L|

(If you can see white L's ignore them, they are just placeholders)
Why? Glass door sliders are pretty wide, often 6mm. You don't need sliders with a total of 12+ mm for plexi doors with (2x1.5=3) 3mm thickness. So cutting them in two will save you money and make the tank more escape or snagproof.

And: In a big project - always start off with a prototype tank! There are many pits you can fall into on your way, so testing your ideas is a must. Don't be afraid to change the design. Calculate as precisely as you can, as well as work as precisely as you can. There is nothing worse than doing a half shabby job and ending up with a tank you can't glue together because you missed something.

But the main rule for everything: If it doesn't work, rethink! In 95% of cases there is a simpler sollution! ALWAYS GO AS SIMPLE AND STRAIGHT FORWARD AS POSSIBLE!  

Hope that helps 

Your's 
MacCirith


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## billopelma (Apr 18, 2006)

For future reference, plexi (acrylic) can be stuck together with methylene chloride based solvent, the stuff I get is called 'Weld-on'. It chemicaly melts the material, dries enough to handle in minutes and produces 100% bond strength. It does require good contact between parts to be attached so a clean saw cut is nessesary on edge joints (as opposed to shearing). I've been working with plexi for years and have never had any success cutting it with shears without it cracking, my hat's off to ya' on that. Hand hammered metal and rivets... Seems that your music has integrated itself into your design, nice. 

Bill


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 19, 2006)

Thanks!

Yeah, I've sawed the sides for wood framed tanks. It was a mess I never wanted to live through again. The "saw dust" got EVERYWHERE, the sawing was loud, took a lot of time and... well it was messy. Also, when sawing the large 2x1m sheets I'd lose plexi due to the near 2mm cut being made. Cutting with shears didn't waste any plexi so the calculations could be followed pretty good.

Thanks for mentioning the Weld-on. It's good to know. For tanks I'll still use the hot glue in the future though. Weld-on (if I can find it or similar here) will be used if ever I use plexi for model building.

With the 80W hot glue gun and the industrial hot glue the seams hold together like anything! Bending apart even smaller parts is very hard, trying to bend apart two tank sides would basically destroy the plexi. I could with all confidence drop one of my tanks to the floor without it breaking to pieces (unless the plexi itself cracks). The seams would hold. The good thing with the hot glue is that IF you really do something wrong, it's pretty easy to cut the seam open with a very thin egde, to cut away the glue and then fixing the entire thing. With the Weld-on it seems to be a one time deal - if it ends up wrong your'e stuck with it... right?


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## Randolph XX() (Apr 19, 2006)

start ur own brand, that's just totally awesomeeee!!!


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## PA7R1CK (Apr 19, 2006)

Amazing tanks! Looks like it took alot of work! Anyway, thanks for sharing all the pictures with us and I agree this should be a sticky.


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## brachy (Apr 19, 2006)

Hi

It is very very goood and nice work. Big congrats. What spp are in these ? I will sent pm for you.


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 19, 2006)

Well, the 4 flat ones will house either 3 imperators and an emilia or 3 GGB's and an emilia.

The digger ones will house 6 H.lividum, if one of them dies (for example due to male old age) my crawshayi will move into the vacant one.

The 2 small but relatively high ones will house a B.vagans and the pulchra

The 6 high narrow ones will be for arboreals (note the doors are at the bottom)

the 3 corner ones are for 1 genic and two aureostriata

and the mega one for the blondi


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## ParabuthusKing (Apr 19, 2006)

*Awesome Cages*

Wow.. it looks like a lot of work has gone into those and I am very impressed.. I REALLY like the custom air vents in the shape of spiders.. you gave me some ideas for creativity if I ever decide to make any more tanks, but seeing as how I made some tanks already for scorpiopns and snakes I KNOW how difficult and frustrating it can be.. especially when things don't work exactly as you envisioned... Awesome job overall A+ in my book


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## TheNatural (Apr 20, 2006)

wow man .... nice nice nice job,
really a 5 stars one. :clap:
Thanks a lot for sharing.

Thought about making them for selling?

And fellow...   yes.. you love writting, hehehe!

P.S - Who was Tito smashing? I hope was not any Brazilian


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## drunkinmaster (Apr 20, 2006)

By any chance can you make these commercially?Great Job!


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## Cirith Ungol (Apr 20, 2006)

Thanks!

No I'm not gonna make them commercially. I'm totally fed up!  Also, it involves waaay to much work building them exactly like that unless I start involving machinery or start switching parts with commercially produced ones (and in that case they won't look like that anymore).

Tito - can't remember, it was a minor player anyhow.


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## rospin (Jul 12, 2006)

this is a great idea! i love what you did for the arboreal tanks...


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## bistrobob85 (Jul 12, 2006)

Well now thats a really constructive thread . I was thinking of building myself some cages for my centipedes and i really like the design of your cages... truly impressive work...


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## Mr_Baker4420 (Jul 12, 2006)

very very nice


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## king7 (Jul 12, 2006)

wow :clap: 

the corner ones are amazing.you could make smaller but taller ones for aboreal's.that way you could have them in every corner in every room/hallway


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## PoPpiLLs (Jul 12, 2006)

those are real nice tanks :clap: the real fun will be filling them up


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## Crunchie (Jul 15, 2006)

Those tanks are utterly fantastic, wish there was something similar available over here, I'd snap them up.:clap:


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## Cirith Ungol (Jul 15, 2006)

Thanks all! (Havn't looked into this thread for some time  )


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## Grim91Z (Jul 21, 2006)

Those are awesome, dude.

BTW, rock on with Immortal and Sodom.


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