The aquarium with their own hands is a useful experience

Having decided to make an aquarium with your own hands, you will come across various factors that will become for you not only new, but also give you the opportunity to gain experience in the structure of aquariums. It is necessary to determine precisely the motivation, for which you, in fact, took up this matter. 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 your friends. In general, this is not the most important thing in this article. Let's consider, that is necessary for work.

1.Select glass.
An important element in the manufacture of the aquarium is glass, the highest mark is M1, and it is the highest quality. Do not choose a glass below the M3. It can be purchased at any glass store. Pay attention to the fact that on the glass there were no scratches, chips, bubbles and cracks. But first, calculate how much your aquarium will have, the volume is calculated by the rule of multiplying the length, width and height. The larger the aquarium, the thicker you need to choose glass. Under the pressure of water, the glass can bend, so use stiffeners, usually they are of the same thickness as the glass itself, only made like strips. If the length of the aquarium is more than one and a half meters, they also use screeds. Screeds 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 the glass you need to deal with the processing. I advise you to take it to the workshop, as self-cutting is quite a complicated task. In addition, the store will cut more carefully, on a special machine, where it will be possible to process the edges, to give a better view. If you decide to make an aquarium with your own hands of a small volume, you can find workshops, where for a small fee cut the right size.

2. Selection of glue.
The next step in making an aquarium with your own hands is choosing a glue. Definitely it should be 100% silicone, which does not kill live microbes, carefully read the instructions. The color is best used for suitable, for example, the black color of silicone looks better on large aquariums, more than 100 liters, white fits perfectly to a light interior, transparent same - universal, its big plus in the transparency of the edges of gluing. Extrude silicone from the tube is difficult enough, so use a special "gun".

3. Preparing the gluing.
Also, for work you will need a soft grindstone or sandpaper, degreaser, napkins, a syringe "twenty" and blades. When reading the literature on the independent development of the aquarium, you will see two ways of gluing - the walls to the bottom and the walls around the bottom. If the edges of your glass are not sharpened in the workshop, then you need to do it yourself, for this, a bath with water is collected, a terry towel is laid on the bottom so that the edges do not split off, and all the sandpaper is cleaned. After that, the edges and the entire glass are wiped off and degreased with acetone or alcohol solution. Previously, the bottom of our aquarium is put in the place where it will dry, on the paper that is put.

4. Gluing the glasses.
When the thickness of the edges of the glass is 4 mm, a syringe is used, from which a silicone with a thickness of 2/3 glass of uniform sausage is squeezed out. If the thickness of the glass is less, then you can use a conventional tube, on which the cut is made, the higher the cut, the safer will be the thinner. After applying the glue along the entire length, the wall is tightly pressed, but not strongly, otherwise part of the glue will come out. The wall that has to be installed needs something to be fixed, the glue from the edges does not touch. Further the same work is done with the rest of our aquarium, only it is necessary to monitor the accuracy of the joining of the walls. After that, the aquarium is left to dry for a day, in any case not to move. When the produced aquarium dries up, begin to stick 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, neat sections.

5. Lighting.
By installing the lighting in the aquarium with your own hands, you take care of the comfort of its "inhabitants". Especially if the aquarium is in some darkened corner of the room. The illumination of the aquarium with its own hands consists, mainly, of the choice of lamps. Calculate 1 watt for 2 liters of water in the aquarium. Also, it is worthwhile to take into account that the light should fall into all corners of the aquarium. In many stores, customers can choose from various types of lamps that are integrated into the aquarium lid.