new tank - glass thickness

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yashrishi

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Mauritius
Hello ;)

I am building a new aquarium tank as per below:

length - 48in (121.92cm)
width - 18in (45.72cm)
height - 24in (60.96cm)

I will be using 10mm glass, with euro bracing on top and bottom.

The aquarium tool calculator says that I have a safety factor of 2.5 for the above dimensions.

Is the safety factor calculated with the aquarium completely filled with water?


I plan to have only 50cm of water in my aquarium, the remaining empty space will be hidden by the top cover...


If I calculate with 121.92cm x 45.72cm x 50cm(height of water), I have a safety factor of 4 with 10mm glass.


Grateful if you could give your opinions and advices...




Thanks a lot,

Rishi.
 
hi yashrishi

Wow you taking the mechanical engineering route there! Well that IMO is the smarter option to design a tank. Well i would not place all my trust in the calculator because unless you verify the calculations, you cant be 100%. Tools like that are great! But they can be dangerous if you know what i mean. Now i'm a beginner myself but i would say that there's more to that in a structural analysis of a tank. Like does the calculator account for euro bracin (this increases tank stiffness enormously!!)? What load conditions does it account for? what is the worst failure mode? Does it account for the shear experience by the marine silicone? Does it account for impact and dynamic loads? What type of glass is considered?

i've seen a number of tanks. most of them are about 8mm. The more higher quality is about 10mm which is comparitively quite thick. Thats just my opinion but i would say that the opinions of the more experienced guys here should be more valuable since they've had alot of experience with marine aquarium and have a "good feel" for the loads and strengths. I'm still new here.
 
hi yashrishi

Wow you taking the mechanical engineering route there! Well that IMO is the smarter option to design a tank. Well i would not place all my trust in the calculator because unless you verify the calculations, you cant be 100%. Tools like that are great! But they can be dangerous if you know what i mean. Now i'm a beginner myself but i would say that there's more to that in a structural analysis of a tank. Like does the calculator account for euro bracin (this increases tank stiffness enormously!!)? What load conditions does it account for? what is the worst failure mode? Does it account for the shear experience by the marine silicone? Does it account for impact and dynamic loads? What type of glass is considered?

i've seen a number of tanks. most of them are about 8mm. The more higher quality is about 10mm which is comparitively quite thick. Thats just my opinion but i would say that the opinions of the more experienced guys here should be more valuable since they've had alot of experience with marine aquarium and have a "good feel" for the loads and strengths. I'm still new here.
 
welcometomasa

10mm is absolutely fine. I don't know how you guys are building the tanks over there, but hopefully different to how the majority does it in South Africa.

What I mean is, the base has to float in between the sidepanes (incl. front and back). Never put the sidepanels (incl. front and back) on top of the base!
 
why not make the tank wider? Better to aquascape :)
 
yashrishi said:
Thanks all :)

we do build tanks with normal glass, with the base in between the side panes ;)
Click to expand...

Now can you see guys, even of Mauritius they know how to glue tanks.;)
 
yashrishi,

10mm will be fine. The dudes who built my tank went 12mm, which I thought 'better safe than sorry' but it adds a lot of distortion which isn't ideal :(

I also suggest making it wider than 45cm's as Tremayn said. I had a 50cm tank which gave me a fair degree of ability to do aquascaping, but my new setup has 700mm which gives me so much more depth. If you can, make it wider.

-Paul
 
LuckyFish said:
welcometomasa

10mm is absolutely fine. I don't know how you guys are building the tanks over there, but hopefully different to how the majority does it in South Africa.

What I mean is, the base has to float in between the sidepanes (incl. front and back). Never put the sidepanels (incl. front and back) on top of the base!
Click to expand...
Well most people goes the wrong way here...when I say most its including me:blush:

When we order glass, the one who will cut the glass to dimension cuts it a way that the side panels falls on top of base..everythi9ng goes on wrong measurement.
 
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