Hello...and question about custom sump

[kurt448]

Hello everyone,
My name is Kurt Soderberg. My wife and I just moved from Rochester, NY to downtown Boston in the South End. We are about a half mile away from Skiptons. We have been reefkeeping for over 3 years now and are in the process of setting up a new 50 gallon tank. At the moment we are at a stand still as we need an acrylic sump built for our setup. If any of you have any recommendations for local manufactures I would be greatly appreciate it. Thanks all and I look forward to meeting some of you at MACNA.
-Kurt

 

[Moe_K]

Hi Kurt, welcome to the group. There's coffee in the back.

There's a place on Dorchester Ave in Dorchester that sells scrap acrylic panels for cheap. The place is JD Freeman's, if I recall correctly. If you pick up a bunch of scrap panels, I bet some of the handy people here could assist you.

 

[The Jester2]

Kurt
Waht are you looking for in a sump? I do my own acylic work and if it's simple I wouldn't mind doing one for you. PM me.

 

[Scarfish]

rubbermaid or steraline...$7 sump

giddyup

it's ghetto, but it works

 

[spectrum]

what demensions do you require, I have one that may suit your needs

 

[ggomez]

Kurt, buy one 1/4" thick acrylic sheet from Lowes in Weymouth
The 24"x48" sheet costs about 30 dollars & they cut it for free.
have them cut it 2 halves & buy that cheap acrylic scriber tool for 2 or 3 bucks.
Once it's cut in two halves the rest is a piece of cake.
you will end up with four 12"x24" pieces
It is just enough to make one 12"x12"x24" sump,
You will need a few pieces for the baffles, these you can find from scrap places.
You must use the proper acrylic sheet glue. I forgot the name, but you can find it in South Boston. It's that # 16 acrylic sheet glue.

Good luck.
If you provide the Corona's I will gladly help you build one. I also live 5 min from Skiptons.

 

[dedfish]

I'm not sure I would trust any hardware store making cuts. All of them as far as I know have a policy that states the cuts are not percision cuts. You are much better off buying your acrylic from a plastics shop and having them cut it. Plus the edges you get from a saw blade are not the best for 'glueing' acrylic together, you really want a very smooth, straight, square edge free of any saw blade marks.

The place in South Boston which sells Weld-On (acrylic solvent) is Altec, it's on B Street.

If your going to go the DIY route I would call them and find out how much it would cost to get the acrylic you need cut to size. If you have a router, you may consider having the acrylic cut slightly larger, like 1/4", so you can use the router to route off 1/8" all arround. This leaves a nice clean edge for joining. Also you want to use what is called cell cast acrylic, not extruded. I don't think any of the acrylic sheets at Home Depot or Lowes is cell cast but I could be wrong.

Have you considered using a smaller glass aquarium as your sump. This is sometimes easier. You could then install baffles made from the HD or Lowes acrylic. Baffles do not need to be cell cast.

Good Luck!

 

[The Jester2]

I agree with everything everyone has said about not buying from Lowes etc. If you are planning on adding water to this sump I would not trust any glued sides that where not done right. I'm not an expert but I have been doing my own acrylic work for many years. If it isn't done right then you are openning yourself up for disaster.

 

[ggomez]

Wow guys, I'm starting to worry now, I am a newbie & this is my 2nd sump I build.
I did use one of those pressure brackets to hold it together for 24 hours & a shiznitload of Weld-on glue. I had one sump for about 6 months, & the other for about 4 months. The older sump is still being used by someone else so it's about 11 months old or so.
I guess this works well with smaller sumps 12gallon to 15gallon since there is very little or no bowing at all.

 

[Piscevore]

The no. 1 difference between cast and extruded acrylic (other than $$$) is toolability.
It is much easier to tool the cast because it has fewer impurities in it (air bubbles, water, filler). As long as you use a high speed router bit and/or a hollow ground (many teeth!) saw blade, there is no real reason to use the cast over standard acrylic for what you are doing.

There is a significant cost savings from using extruded if you are careful and patient. Dedfish is correct in that it is easier to use(The cuts are much much cleaner/smoother). If you apply solvent to a poorly cut edge, and don't wait long enough for it to dissolve before sticking two pieces together, you will have pin holes. (I know all about this). Don't buy anything less than 1/4 acrylic. Its easy to glue a box together, if you search for acrylic on brs there is a posting a month or so back linked from Reef central that tells you step by step how to make an acrylic tank.

 

[Clam Man]

if you do not want to go through all the work you could buy a 30g tank buy a small piece of acrylic cut it with a fine tooth saw blade 3 pieces for bubble trap and drill a hole for a top off float

 

[kurt448]

Thanks for all of the replies...I didn't know if I had any yet since I don't get emailed like at RC when someone does reply to your thread. Well I wish I could do the sump myself. Unfortunately I have all the equipment at my parents place in upstate new york. My space is too precious in my small apartment to bring my table saw up. Unfortunately due to space limitations in my sump I am constrained to 16 x 13.5" for the sump footprint. Assuming I am maximizing my space. So I need a sump built that will hold a euroreef CS6-1 with a 8.5 x 10" footprint, a few bubble baffles, and an exit bulkhead. So at this point I am just looking for someone to build something that fits within those paramaters. Thanks again.

-Kurt

**jester - you've got a PM

 

[dedfish]

Kurt, if you click on 'User CP' in the top left of the page you can change the settings so you get an email when someone replies.