Making Money With Your Reef Aquarium
Part 3 - Equipment Savings by Building It Yourselfby Stan Hauter
The
old "tried and true" way to get bargains is to build it yourself.
You can easily and consistently save about half of the retail cost of some
equipment by just making it yourself. You can't realistically build
a pump or a lighting ballast. However, you can make tanks, stands, lighting
assemblies, hoods, skimmers, reef plugs, plug racks, live rock base, and
the many other things you need when building a propagation set up, or expanding
on a present system.
If you are not a certified do-it-yourselfer, become one, or cultivate a friendship with someone who is. This is the biggest and easiest place to save money. Generally speaking, you can build an item for less than half of what it would cost to buy it. Other than a few fancy cabinets, I have yet to see a DIY project that couldn't be completed in a few hours or less. The first one takes all the time, until you figure out easy ways to do each step in the instructions. If you are building more than one of the same thing at the same time, you can save even more time by using the "production line" method.
Let's start with building your own glass tanks. The great thing about building your own tanks is that you can make them in any size and shape that you choose. If you find the need for a "deep" tank, just design it. Then go to your local glazier, have him/her cut the glass, take it home and put it together. Assembling a glass tank takes all of about 30 minutes. No more waiting for your LFS to special order the tank for you, then have to wait another 2 weeks for it to arrive. You can get up in the morning, decide you want a special tank and have it running by the next night if you make it yourself. Building a 55 gallon tank should run you about $30.00. In Part 1 of this series I touched on computing what your potential output will be for a given tank space and gave an example of GARF's DIY rack farming coral propagation room. This was using 55 gallon tanks for small scale coral farming, that you can build and add to one at a time. This design incorporates using plug racks made from acrylic for propagating and storing approximately 200 frag cuttings. Refer back to Part 1 for more details about this set up. Keep in mind you are not limited to using glass as a building medium. GARF's 140 gallon tank designed for a live rock grow out set up is made of glass and plywood.
Now let's consider tank stands. All it takes is a plan, some basic lumber, a drill motor, a saw, a few nuts and bolts and an hour's work. Since you aren't really too concerned about a fancy appearance, you don't have to worry about the finish work that takes all the time and effort when building a good quality stand or cabinet. You can also build "over and under" tank stands so you can stack your tanks and save even more time, space, and money. During the 10 years that I ran my Hawaiian fish collection business, using the "over and under" method, constructing the set up with 4 x 4's and cement cinder blocks, I was able to store 16-55 gallon glass aquariums in a small area measuring 10 feet x 20 feet. Talk about simple, inexpensive and compact!
Next Page > Saving
Money with DIY Lights, Skimmers,
Live
Rock Base & Other Propagation Tools
Coral Head image from Patricia Michaels
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