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set up in your livingroom! It's as easy keeping a salt aquarium as fresh water fish, this guide shows you how! The clown fish is one of the most known salt water fishes. A clown fish can be hard to keep by themselves in a salt water fish tank , ofcourse. If possible the clown fish should be keept in a pair. Clown fishes have a fantastic relation to the anemon where the clown hide, lovely ocean animals.

Build your own fish tank!

I'm going to tell you right away: It's not cheap and it might not even look good the first couple of times you try so why bother about it, you may ask?

It CAN be cheap, really cheap if you got the right connections to obtain the materials and it CAN look good, just as you might envisioned it on paper and not to forget, it feels pretty darn good to have accomplished something like that!

First of all you got two options, building in acrylic or in good ol glass. Acrylic can easily scratch but on the other hand the scratches are also easier to repair then on glass. Acrylic might also be more convinient because of it's lighter weight as well as easier to customize as you can drill holes into it and much more easier hide away ugly looking filter and pump pipes. Other then that I don't se many advantages with choosing acrylic over glass, besides beeing more "scratch resistable", glass won't yellow over time as the acrylic ones do and glass aquariums, especially if built by yourself is much more cheaper then acrylic ones.

So what do I need then? Well, besides the glass, which are the aquarium type were going to focus on in this guide you'll need this:

In the picture we have:

• Solvent
• Tape measure
• Marker pen
• Matches
• Silicone

The solvent is used for the glas, just wipe it of a few times with a rag to make sure the silicon will attach. Any solvent can be used, aceton works grate for example.

The matches creates a gap when sticked in between the glas sides and are there to make room for the silicon.

The silicon works as the glue and makes sure the construction is waterproof.

But something's missing right? Yes, the glas of course but before you run out after that you'll have to decide the size of your tank cause you can't just use any glas, and it's the thickness of the glas I'm thinking about. But before we step into that we have to decide how big of tank we're looking at.

The volume of the fish tank is not only a number but an really important aspect. Deciding for a common size aquarium makes it much easier to find equipment such as lightning and decor and what about your floor for example? would it stand the pressure from a 200 gal aquarium made out of glas? Keep it in mind at least but in general bigger is better and when going crazy on the sketch board you might find this calculator handy, it sets the volume for different sizes.

So let's construct shall we? First of all the glas has to be cut, and before doing that don't forget to cut the length of the glas sides with it's thickness and an extra millimeter or two for the silicone. If you're buying the glas from a glazier's shop they are most likely to be able to cut the glas for you at a good price but it can be easily done yourself to.

Make sure to only make one scar with the cutter and don't be afraid to give the glas a steady push when breaking it.

Done!

Now, clean the glas with your solvent and eventually make the edges a bit softer with sandpaper. Place the bottom on a flat surface, cover the edges along the bottom with the matches and simply put the sides above attached to each other by the tape, having someone to help you trough this first phase would be really handy, it should look something like this:

The glueing act (silicone) is something you'll should repeat over again but once the parts on place it's actually quite easy. Make sure to flatten out the silicon from time to time from the inside using your fingers dipped in a little washing-up liquid. It can be hard to make the joints look good and a good suggestion for the first timer is to put some tape from the inside before starting glueing and skip the leveling-out part. Once all sides been glued you let it dry overnight.

Day two you'll remove the matches and fill out the spaces with extra silicone, push the sides together to make sure they are well connected and flatten out the overflow with your finger as mentioned abow. When looking good, and don't worry to much about that cause theire are lots of nice aquarium frames you can install later if you want to, let it stay another night.

Day three, showdown! First get rid of ugly silicone using an razor-blade and then you are ready to go, put the tank, your custom made fish tank, on some styrofoam and fill it up!

Wait, was about to forget about one thing, the silicone, you can't just use any silicone, it has to be one that's free from arsenic(otherwise used for keeping it from groing mold)

Good luck!

ARTICLES:

• Breeding clown fish
• Considerations for buying a large tank
• marine aquarium do's and dont's for beginners

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