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

[billopelma]

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

 

[Cirith Ungol]

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?

 

[Randolph XX()]

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

 

[PA7R1CK]

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.

 

[brachy]

Hi

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

 

[Cirith Ungol]

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

 

[ParabuthusKing]

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

 

[TheNatural]

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

 

[drunkinmaster]

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

 

[Cirith Ungol]

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.

 

[rospin]

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

 

[bistrobob85]

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...

 

[Mr_Baker4420]

very very nice

 

[king7]

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

 

[PoPpiLLs]

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

 

[Crunchie]

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

 

[Cirith Ungol]

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

 

[Grim91Z]

Those are awesome, dude.

BTW, rock on with Immortal and Sodom.