PlanetCatfish.com

I realize that i really haven't introduced myself before so here it is folks I am a contractor from Michigan and have had a thing for exotic cats since i caught my first bullhead as a little boy. When i was first married I ended up living in one of the houses i bought to fix up and sell and due to the poor conditions of the house heating system ended up losing my origional tank. I was so distrought over the event that i didn't set up another tank for 17 years, I studied biospheres in college as part of my engineering my favorites were of course aquatic. 10 years ago I bought a pontoon boat and totally redid it I rekindled my love for fishing and have been mentoring troubled neighborhood kids for just as long I found I like to fish but I love to teach childeren to fish and respect nature even more. But their was somthing missing so I set up a new tank and There it was completion I didn't mean to be rude and not introduce myself sorry if I offended anyone I do not normaly take part in forums but i have followed this one for several years any way i dont know if this is the proper place or not but I did come to you folks for a little help see other post but after reading some of the thins in tank talk i might be able to afford to build a ply wood tank i thought i would have to do it out of concrete too exspesive thanks all Danno
P.S. any suggestions would be appreciated and welcome

Welcome to the site Danno

Welcome along to the site Danno, I don't have much experience of DIY projects, but maybe someone will advise.

Jools

Welcome to Planet Catfish, Danno.

Building plywood tanks have been discussed several times. It can be a pretty useful way to create LARGE tanks relatively inexpensively. But for "normal" sized tanks (upto around 8ft/300g/1200 liter) there is very little difference between glass, acrylic and plywood. If you search in Tank Talk, you'll find some "paper napkin"[1] calculations on the cost of building a "marine ply" tank.

Also bear in mind that the tank cost is only a small part of the equation. You also need filtration, heating and perhaps lighting. These will cost about 2x the cost of the tank (no big difference between a small tank and a large one, really).

Finally, since most supplies of plywood go to about 8 x 4ft, it's increasingly difficult to reach sizes above the size of 8 x 4 x 4ft (950 gallon/3400 ltr), and even at that size, you really have to know what you're doing structurally, as there will be a significant weight when that is filled with water. I wouldn't do that, but that's just me.

[1] You know, when you sit in a restaurant discussing something, and the only piece of paper available is a paper napkin or a cigarette packet, and you use that to do your calculations - meaning very basic, not completely thought through.

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Mats