Having decided to make an aquarium with your own hands, you will encounter various factors that will become not only new for you, but also provide an opportunity to gain experience in building aquariums. It is necessary to determine the exact motivation, for which you, in fact, took up this business. You can just make an aquarium with your own hands for yourself or earn extra money by selling it, or you can give it to friends. In general, this is not the most important in this article. Consider what you need to work.
1. The choice of glass.
A rather important element in the manufacture of the aquarium is glass, the highest mark will be M1, it is the highest quality. You should not choose glass below M3. It can be purchased at any glass store. Pay attention to ensure that there are no scratches, chips, bubbles or cracks on the glass. But first, calculate how much your tank will have, the volume is calculated according to the rule of multiplying length, width and height. The larger the aquarium, the thicker you need to choose glass. Glass can bend under water pressure, therefore stiffeners are used, usually they are the same thickness as the glass itself, only made as strips. When the length of the aquarium is more than one and a half meters, screeds are also used. Ties are ordinary strips of the same glass, 3-5 cm wide, which are glued to the stiffeners from below or at the bottom.
After choosing a glass, you need to do the processing. I advise you to take it to the workshop, as independent cutting is a rather complicated matter. In addition, the store will be cut more accurately, on a special machine, where it will be possible to process the edges, to give a better look. If you decide to make an aquarium with your own hands of a small volume, then you can also find workshops where, for a small fee, the necessary dimensions will be cut.
2. The choice of glue.
The next step in making an aquarium with your own hands is the choice of glue. Definitely it should be 100% silicone, which does not kill live microbes, carefully read the instructions. It is best to use a suitable color, for example, the black color of silicone looks better in large aquariums, more than 100 liters, white is perfect for a light interior, transparent is universal, its big plus in the transparency of the gluing edges. Squeezing the silicone out of the tube is quite difficult, so use a special “gun”.
3. Preparation of gluing.
Also, for work you will need a soft whetstone or sandpaper, a degreaser, wipes, a twenty syringe and blades. When reading literature about independent development of the aquarium, you will see two ways of gluing - walls to the bottom and walls around the bottom. If the edges of your glass were not sharpened in the workshop, then you need to do it yourself, for this a bath of water is collected, a terry towel is laid on the bottom so that the edges do not break off, and everything is cleaned with sandpaper. After that, the edges and the glass are completely wiped and degreased with acetone or an alcohol solution. Previously, the bottom of our aquarium is put in the place where it will dry on a newspaper.
4. Glass bonding.
When the thickness of the edges of the glass is 4 mm, a syringe is used, from which silicone is squeezed out with a thickness of 2/3 of the glass with a uniform sausage. If the glass thickness is less, then you can use a regular tube on which the cut is made, the higher the cut, the thinner the sausage will be. After applying the adhesive along the entire length, the wall is pressed tightly, but not strongly, otherwise part of the adhesive will come out. The set wall must be supported on something; we do not touch the glue that protrudes from the edges. Next, the same work is done with the rest of our aquarium, it is only necessary to monitor the accuracy of the connection of the walls. After which we leave the aquarium to dry for a day, in no case move it. When the made aquarium dries with its own hands, proceed to gluing the stiffeners. Apply glue to the entire length and width of the strips. The dried glue on the seams is removed with the help of a blade, with neat cuts.
5. Lighting.
Installing lighting in the aquarium with your own hands, you care about the comfort of its "residents". Especially if the aquarium is in some dark corner of the room. Do-it-yourself lighting of the aquarium consists mainly of a choice of lamps. Calculate 1 watt per 2 liters of water in the aquarium. It is also worth considering that the light enters all corners of the aquarium. In many stores, customers can choose from various types of lamps that are built into the lid of the aquarium.