Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all,

As part of my massive landscaped design "MLD" I am looking at a large rectangular fishtank which will be used for display purpuses also.

I have priced up a 3m x 2m x 1.4m fibreglass tank to be made by forming fibreglass around a frame made with wood and ply. This was costed at $3.2k

I am thinking, I could use the same materials for the frame that they use for esky's or even coolroom panels.

This would give me about 8000Lt of capacity in an insulated box. Could also colour and pattern the fibreglass to suit my display requirements. Will more likely dig in and timber frame it.

Anyone have a better deal for a tank about 3m x 2m?

Go plastic. Heavy plastic. Get your tank from an agriculture supplier.

hey vlt, sounds good, I recently made a tank out of foam panel off cuts and i thought it turnd out quite well, I think its neat, all i did was made a rectangle then layed a liner in it and caped it off with some ali chanel then trimed off the exces liner, the dementions of my tank are 2400 x 1200 x 500mm at 450mm deep it holds over 1000 ltr's and it cost me $90.00 for the liner.

you could try useing panels cut to the size you want with a coloured liner and i think you would save some cash.

The idea to use Fibreglass comes from other aquaponic systems which advocate FB tanks.

The area that I have is rectangular in shape. So the custom tank will fit nicely.

I am currently building a test system at my parents using a rainwater tank cut at 1400mm. Depending on the success of this test system, I may ditch the custom tank and just join 2 rainwater tanks together.

Fibreglass is ok, just make sure it's well guarded. AP has a tendency to be redesigned and sometimes quite heavy work is done around the tanks, and a hole is more than possible.

Check out some local fiberglass tank manufacturers, my big tank is half a rain water tank and it was $2000

To the ppl who are thinking of making tanks from polystyrene and fiberglass, the two dont mix you will need high density foam like surf boards, just thought id mention that, might save someone a few bucks in mistakes

Yeah....the original qoute was from a marine fibreglass fabricator.

He is quite popular with the boating community.

He suggested we build a frame out of wood and then he would coat it.

I did my 7x1.5x0.6m above ground concrete tank for just under a grand. Including ply for formwork. Only thing 2nd hand was a pallet of bricks to make the outside pretty.
pond
That's DIY including mixing concrete.

Edit:
How flexible are you on size, just remembered seeing this from a BYAP install. Perhaps 2 separate tanks? Guessing 2.2m Width 1.2m Height 1m.
No idea on cost tho.

The size qouted above is a perfect fit. Another idea is joining 2 x 1.95 diameter watertanks together.

Hi Vlt, i was just thinking of how I would build this tank(have a little fiberglass experience ) and all the diferent things I was thinking was " Dam this tank is going to way a bit"

got a forklift handy

Lol