TODD BUILDS HIS 2500 GALLON CEMENTAQUARIUM FOR STINGRAYS IN THE BASEMENT
In the beginning the big question was, should the monster tropical fish aquarium be constructed out of plywood or cement? Ted voted for wood as he had finished his 2400 gallon plywood fish tankseveral years ago and it has been a great success. Carl would like to have gone with Acrylic but for an aquarium 16 feet long the cost of custom Acrylic sheets over 8 feet in length is prohibitive. Todd wanted to build his aquarium using cement. A business associate in the concrete forms and foundations business was ready to start yesterday.
Concrete was Todd’s choice for the new 2500 gallon aquarium; it just had to be 100 gallons larger than Ted’s 2400 gallon plywood fish tank. The engineering was next, for the aquarium construction project to be located in the basement of Todd’s house. The design called for walls 6” thick reinforced with 5/8” rebar running along the bottom, center and top and wired to the vertical rods on 18” centers. The 6” thick concrete walls cover all the reinforcing rods. The concrete wall thickness and size of rebar may have been slightly over engineered but as we began thinking about the Seattle Fault it seemed wiser to over engineer.