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Friendly Aquaponics, Inc., Aquaponics Systems Designs

2012 Epoxy/Plywood/Fiberglass Tank
Construction Manual

Cheaper than a swimming pool!

Feeds your family, earns a living,

and nothing is more fun than
a fish tank full of kids

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Friendly Aquaponics, Inc.

The Most Advanced Food Production
System in the World
"Purchased" Version:
Construction Manual For Plywood/Epoxy/Fiberglass
Aquaponics Fish and Filter Tanks With Photos
(Copyright 2008-12 Friendly Aquaponics, Inc, Susanne Friend, and Tim Mann. May not be
reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the authors)
Friendly Aquaponics, Inc, PO Box 1196, Honokaa, Hawaii 96727

Notice: We offer a "free" version of this manual with no photos included that can be downloaded
from our website at (http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com/free-diy-stuff/free-downloads/).

This $49.99 version of the plywood tank manual does include photos, it is copyrighted, and we sell
it on our website. If you've been "given" this manual or told that it is "free", rather than
purchasing it from our website, that is not true. Please read #2 following about personal integrity
and do what you think is right. Use of this manual for the purpose of constructing or having
constructed plywood, epoxy, and fiberglass tanks substantially similar to the ones described
herein constitutes acceptance of the following conditions and terms of use of this material:

1. You have the right to personally construct or have constructed one or more of these
plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tanks from this information for your own personal or business
use. We provide this manual to those who will use it to build their own tanks because we
want you to succeed in aquaponics and aquaculture, and as any businessperson knows,
reducing your startup costs can be a big part of that success.

2. If you construct plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tanks for others for profit, allow others to use
this manual to construct plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tanks for profit, "lend" this manual to
others for them to construct plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tanks for profit, or sell this manual
to anyone whatsoever, you hereby agree to remit to Friendly Aquaponics, Inc., PO Box 1196,
Honokaa, Hawaii 96727, the sum of $50 US for each such plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tank
constructed using this manual. We want you to be a success, but if you REALLY use this
manual to become a success by selling tanks, we’d like you to recognize that our work made
yours easier, and has value to you. It’s called integrity. Please treat us in the manner that
you would wish to be treated if you had done this work. Mahalo! (Means thanks, or “job well
done” in the Hawaiian language).

This manual is dedicated to my wife Susanne, who inspired me to do more with

less, and to share it with everyone; and to my lifelong mentor and friend Jim
Brown, without whose boat designs and “SeaRunner Construction Manual” to
navigate by and teach me how to write user-friendly technical publications, this
manual could never have been created.

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Contents:

Introduction Page 2
1. Materials Selection, Tools, and Considerations Page 5
2. Gluing and Fastening Page 9
3. Filleting and Sanding (and NOT Sanding!) Page 16
4. Fiberglassing Page 17
5. Putting Together the Pieces Page 24
6. Fitting Types and Installation Page 30
7. Finishing Your Tank Page 33
8. Airstone Installation Page 34
9. Fill and Test Tank Page 35
10. Moving Tanks: Ways and Considerations Page 36
11. Materials Lists For Some Standard-sized Tanks Page 38
12. How To Waste Your Time On A Tank Page 41

Now THAT’S a fish tank! Flip side of

this tank shown next, but this
technique allows you to build
complex, high-tech tanks for very
little money!

This is a 5,000-gallon tank, and has

an integral two-compartment solids
settling tank, a net tank, and a
degas tank, as you will see in the
next photograph.

The flip side. Airstones shown

hanging down inside the tank look
a little strange, but gravity is still
in effect in this photo (because of
the weird photo angle).

This multi-compartment tank in

custom fiberglass from a
manufacturer would have cost us
$22,000 (plus $11,000 shipping!)
only using the techniques in this
manual, two people built it in two
weeks for $1,400 of materials.

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Introduction
Why would you want to make a plywood and fiberglass tank in the first place? If they’re well-built and taken care of,
they will easily last thirty years. They can be made with custom partitions, just the size and shape you want, instead
of having to make do with whatever tanks you can afford. We made a custom multi-compartment 7,000-gallon
integrated tank for our aquaponics farm that had 5 separate compartments in it, multiple fittings, and a shade roof,
that would have cost $22,000 or so from a fiberglass manufacturer, and in Hawaii, would have cost another $11,000
or so to ship to us. This $33,000 tank cost us $1,400 of materials and two weeks of labor by two people.

This tank construction manual includes complete text and photos, and is designed with the intention of empowering
people with no fiberglass experience to be able to build plywood/epoxy/fiberglass tanks. There was an incredible
amount of work involved in writing this, and years more in gaining the experience that makes building tanks using this
manual much easier than learning the hard way by oneself. We also offer a "free" version of this manual as a
download from our website, because we want to pass this information on. It’s sort of the “you’re hungry, here’s a free
bowl of soup” version of the manual.

This version of this manual took a lot more time to put together, with complete color pictures of construction
techniques, as well as a separate downloadable CAD drawing of the tank construction, along with a complete materials
list for a sample tank. That’s why we charge $49.99 for it. It’s the “you’re hungry and paid fifty bucks, here’s a
delicious five-course hot meal” version of the manual.

The CAD drawing that comes with this manual should have also downloaded when you purchased the manual. You can
either view it on your computer using Adobe Viewer or email to your nearest Office Max Impress (their printing shop)
to have printed on 36” by 24” D-size paper, which is then very easy to use as a paper plan to build your tank(s)
from. If you need a tank that is different from the tank in the drawing, you can easily use the general principles in this
manual and make your own materials list by carefully counting all the sides and pieces and fittings in your tank from
a sketch you make yourself.

This construction manual is a step-by-step explanation of the process of building these tanks. When combined with
the drawings and pictures that come with this manual, you have a graphic explanation of the entire process. This
makes it much easier to duplicate the process successfully if you haven’t done anything like this before. Read the
whole thing a couple of times and make sure you comprehend what’s being explained before you start doing or
buying anything.

Tim Mann, the writer of this manual, has been building similar structures for nearly 40 years (boats), and some of
those structures, notably a 56-foot long one with sails named Tropic Bird, are still working just fine after 32 years in
the water. A boat is just a tank designed to keep the water out instead of in. So, if you build your tank (or boat) the
way described here, it will likely last for a very long time. However, we are counting on you, the users, to share
anything new you discover about these types of tanks with us so we can share it with others. If you wish, we will
include your name (and contact information if you wish), with your discovery. We don't think we know it all ourselves,
as some of the most productive and functional innovations in our systems and techniques came from other people
whom we freely acknowledge. We live in Hawaii; this is the way of Aloha. We acknowledge our kumu (teachers) freely
and are deeply indebted to them for sharing their knowledge with us.

Words Appearing in This Manual You Should Pay Extra Attention To:

IMPORTANT: When this appears, it means it won't work as well if you don't do it this way, and will
work better if you do.

WARNING! This means it is dangerous to ignore it; you may injure yourself or others, start a fire or a
flood, cut off a piece of your anatomy, or damage or destroy a tool.

By the way, a finished tank is heavy and large; it can be big enough to kill someone if handled carelessly.
Please read the end of Section 9 first, which covers what’s involved when turning over a finished tank or
moving it to its installation location, to make sure you can handle this part of the job. You have to be able
to move your tank safely, or there’s no point in building it. It’ll just sit in your shop forever.

(Quote of the day) John Wayne: “Life is hard. If you’re stupid it’s harder”.

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1. Materials Selection, Tools, and Considerations

PLYWOOD: We use exterior grade ¾” thick ACX untreated plywood in our tanks. It is manufactured with the same
waterproof glue that marine plywood is, but doesn’t have the high price tag, because it uses a much lower grade of
wood. The “A” in ACX means that one side is good, that is, the “A” side has no knotholes or splits and this is the side
we put inside the tanks and cover with fiberglass and epoxy resin to waterproof it. The “C” means that the ”C” side
has knotholes and splits, but this is OK, because it’s going to be on the outside of the tank where it won’t make any
difference. The “X” means exterior, and glued with waterproof glue.

If you absolutely need to have your tanks look good on the outside for some reason, you can buy ABX or AAX plywood
(which has two good faces), at much higher prices. ACX plywood can be purchased at Lowe’s, Home Depot, Fred
Meyer’s, and many other lumberyard-type places. Plywood is extremely strong for its cost, can be easily cut and
shaped into many different configurations, and when glued together with epoxy glue is just like steel that has been
welded together with welding rod. If you think of epoxy as a “wood welding compound”, you’ll have an accurate idea
of how using plywood and epoxy can create a large structure that is much stronger than any of its individual pieces
by themselves.

WARNING! If you accidentally buy “Interior” plywood, expect it to gradually delaminate and fall apart;
although this sometimes takes years. You can tell if you have exterior plywood because all plywood is
supposed to have a “grade stamp” somewhere on it that states that is IS exterior plywood. If you’re in
doubt, cut off a 3” square piece of it, put it in a pot of water on your stove and BOIL IT for about half an
hour. Let it cool, then if it’s still holding together the next day after it’s cooled off, it’s exterior plywood.

LUMBER: Use “treated” lumber that is treated with a water-based Borate wood preservative. We’re going to tell you
to paint the tank plywood with this stuff anyway after you’ve finished the tank, but before painting it. You can’t use
treated plywood to build the tanks with because the epoxy/fiberglass combination won’t stick well to the Borate-
treated wood (which feels kind of greasy when dry, and when wet is, well, wet). This is why we use untreated
plywood to build the tanks with, fiberglass the inside of the tank, then treat the outside with a water-based Borate
wood preservative before painting it. If you can find it, get dry treated lumber (that was treated awhile ago, and has
had time to dry back out). If you can’t get dry lumber, buy it as long before you make the tank as you can, and store
it in a dry place with “stickers”, little strips of wood, stuck between the lumber in your stack, so it can dry out.

FASTENERS: For fasteners, we recommend hot-dipped galvanized screws (the kind with the “square-drive” are best!)
in the sizes called out in the materials list. IF you have an air-powered nail gun, and you are good with it, you can
substitute galvanized gun nails for the screws we suggest you use. You can also hand-nail these tanks. However, a
nail can never clamp a glue joint as tightly as a screw can, and although your joints will probably be OK, they will not
be as strong if you use nails.

EPOXY GLUE/RESIN; THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT: every single wood-to-wood joint in these tanks is glued
together with the epoxy glue that you later fiberglass the plywood with. You could take all the fasteners out of one of
these tanks after the glue has hardened, and the tanks would not be any weaker. Conversely, if you only used the
screws and no epoxy glue, the tanks would fall apart. We’ve had people try to build these tanks this way (without
the epoxy glue in the joints, or by using cheaper “carpenter’s wood glue”) because they “knew better”, and they did
fall apart. Epoxy glue is one of those things that should cost way more than it does because it solves big problems
cheaply. Epoxy resin systems that work for these tanks include (but are not limited to): System Three, WEST System
Resins, and other two-part epoxy resins that can be purchased at plastics supply houses, boating and marine supply
stores, and fiberglass suppliers. Epoxy is the most expensive when you purchase it in small quantities; if you can find
a place that sells it in five-gallon sizes, with one-gallon sizes of hardener, that will probably be the cheapest.

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Two different types of resin with

different mix ratios from the same
manufacturer in a marine supply
store. Blue cans are light viscosity
(thinner) for fiberglassing, and the
turquoise are medium viscosity
(thicker) for gluing and making
putty. However, you can use the
light viscosity blue can resin for
gluing and making putty just as
easily. This means you only need
one resin system in the shop to
glue and fiberglass.

IMPORTANT: You will probably notice that Polyester Resin (sometimes called Surfboard Resin) is less expensive than
epoxy. It is also much weaker, and bonds poorly to the wood. To get a polyester/fiberglass coating (layup) the same
strength as one layer of fiberglass cloth with epoxy resin, you need to use three layers of fiberglass cloth with three
times as much polyester resin. The problem with this is that although the polyester resin costs half as much as the
epoxy resin does, you need to use three times as much of the resin, and three times as much fiberglass cloth. It ends
up costing twice as much to use polyester for the same strength as epoxy. It is not glue, and cannot be used in
place of epoxy glue; it does not glue joints together with any strength!! Also, most epoxies are food-grade, while
polyester is not; it outgasses toxic solvents for quite awhile after you have manufactured it into a tank.

FIBERGLASS: Buy 6-ounce fiberglass cloth 50” wide from the same places that have the epoxy, in rolls for the best
price. Usually. Shop around for both epoxy and fiberglass prices, because they can vary widely. If someone asks, this
is standard “E” glass (for electrical). You don’t need to buy the more expensive “S” glass (for structural) unless you’re
planning on taking your fish tanks above the stratosphere. The epoxy and fiberglass suppliers will also often have
cheap yellow plastic “squeegees” about 6 inches long, get a handful of these to use for squegeeing resin onto flat
horizontal plywood surfaces; they also often have the cheap bristle brushes and roller covers for resin, you will need
2” and 3” brushes and ten or more roller covers.

PAINT: The paint we recommend is Benjamin Moore Soft Gloss exterior Moorglo latex enamel. We paint the exterior
non-fiberglassed surfaces of the tank with HiBor or other brand of borate water-base wood preservative and let it dry
welll before putting the paint on. We use three coats of paint, without using a primer. If you do use a primer, use a
Benjamin Moore primer. Yes, I know you can get cheaper paint. Cheap paint is a fool’s game, and we have heard so
many horror stories from people who used cheap paint then spent days fixing the problems later. Benjamin Moore
paint paints so easily, and covers and weathers so well, that it IS cheap paint and is worthwhile finding a dealer near
you and putting in the time to get the right paint. It’s what professional painters use, because their time is worth
more than anything to them, and this paint takes less time to paint right and look good than any other. If you want to
do a Cadillac job on your tanks, use three coats of a good oil-base polyurethane floor enamel in any color you like.
This paint is hard as nails after it’s dried for a couple of weeks, and is reasonably priced.

BRUSHES: For brushing the epoxy, use those throw-away cheap bristle brushes. Get ten or twenty of the 2” or 2-
1/2” for painting glue joints, and ten or twenty of the 3” (4” is better if you can get them) for fiberglassing. Get a
gallon of acetone and a gallon of lacquer thinner and a plastic or glass gallon jar with a screw-on lid or a metal gallon
coffee can with a plastic lid (Why? Covered later in “Gluing Tricks”). Get a bucket of water, an old towel, and some
“Simple Orange” or equivalent mechanic’s hand cleaner for cleaning epoxy off your hands.

FILLER: For mixing with the epoxy resin to fill cracks and make fillets (explained later), use only microballoons,
which are tiny spheres of phenolic resin. They usually come in brown, red and purple (color doesn't matter) and can
be purchased the same places epoxy resin can. They may seem expensive, but they’re not, because they sand easily.
You can substitute a "cheaper" filler called microspheres for microballoons (microspheres are tiny quartz spheres),
however, they are more work to work with, make a harder filler that is much more difficult to sand if you need to
sand it, and use more resin, all of which makes them a more expensive filler to use. Don’t be tempted to use even
cheaper fillers than this such as sawdust, chopped fiberglass, silica, or asbestos. They will make your job HELL IN
CAPITAL LETTERS if you need to sand fillets or holes filled with them.

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TOOLS AND SUPPLIES: It’s easy to build plywood tanks (or boats) if you have the following tools: measuring tape,
hammer, carpenter’s square, hand saw, battery-powered drill, drill bits, screwdriver bits, jigsaw (for cutting large
round holes), 6-1/2” or 7-1/4” SkilSaw with good 42-tooth carbide blade, 4” or 4-1/2” minigrinder with some 50-grit
and 36-grit disks, 5” or 6” orbital or random-motion sander with 80-grit and 60-grit sandpaper, full sheets of 80-grit
and 60-grit sandpaper, 1-1/4” and 3” putty knives, a knife, scissors, regular sandpaper, a rasp, and a couple of
plastic clipboards (yes, clipboards, cheap plastic ones. I’ll explain in a bit); also, disposable mixing sticks (chopsticks
work great!), 2-oz plastic daisy cups, 4-oz plastic daisy cups, 8-oz plastic cups, and clean cans of all sizes up to a
gallon, with no sharp edges on the top, all used to mix epoxy in.

If you can afford it and know how to use one, a router with a ¾” radius round-over bit makes rounding the outside
corners really easy. If you have fewer tools than this, it’s more work. Get a friend with tools and building skills
involved if this sounds like Greek to you, or just bite the bullet, buy this stuff, and teach yourself how to use it all.
There are some great Sunset books on “How To.....”, that you can buy at most Home Depots and Lowes. It’s how I
got my first sailboat 42 years ago when I was 17 and had no money and fewer skills.

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Tools shown in this photo include a 1-inch brush, 2-inch brush, 4-inch
brush, cheap yellow squeegees, fiberglass cloth scissors, "handpaper", and
the obligatory dirty jeans. The brushes are "throw-away" cheap ones, but
we re-use them many times with the addition of "brush garage" technology.

These are two pieces of “handpaper”, one

a little more beat up than the other.
Handpaper is made by gluing two full
sheets of sandpaper together, smooth side
to smooth side, with spray adhesive. After
they are glued together, they can be cut
into useful sizes with an old pair of
scissors or sheet metal shears.

Very useful “sizes” are a 36-grit on one

side glued to a 50-grit on the other; a 50-
grit on one side with an 80 on the other;
and an 80 on one side with a 120 on the
other.

Handpaper lasts almost forever compared

to regular sandpaper, is easy to grip and
use (not “slippery” like a folded sheet of
regular sandpaper is), and does a lot of
sanding work in a short time. I think I
invented it in 1978, but it could be one of
those “hundredth monkey” things too.

Two brands of adhesive for making handpaper: 3M

General Purpose “45”, and Duro “All Purpose
Spray Adhesive”.

To make handpaper, spray a light coating of the

adhesive on the smooth sides of the two pieces of
paper, let it dry a couple of minutes, then slap the
paper together, making sure to get the edges
aligned carefully first (because you can’t move
them after they touch each other!).

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Tools shown in this photo include a measuring tape, hammer, carpenter’s square, hand saw,
router with 3/4" round-over bit, battery-powered drill, drill bits, screwdriver bits, jigsaw (for
cutting large round holes), 6-1/2” or 7-1/4” SkilSaw with good 42-tooth carbide blade, 4” or 4-
1/2” minigrinder with some 50-grit and 36-grit disks, 5” or 6” orbital or random-motion sander
with 80-grit and 60-grit sandpaper, full sheets of 80-grit and 60-grit sandpaper for making
“handpaper”, 1-1/4” and 3” putty knives, a knife, regular sandpaper, a rasp, and a couple of
plastic clipboards (yes, clipboards, cheap plastic ones. I’ll explain in a bit); also, disposable
mixing sticks (chopsticks work GREAT!), 2-oz plastic daisy cups, 4-oz plastic daisy cups, 8-oz
plastic cups, and clean cans of all sizes up to a gallon, with no sharp edges on the top, all used
to mix epoxy in.

2. Gluing and Fastening (This should be called “Epoxy and Epoxy”)

This is really simple: everytime you put two pieces of wood together, you paint the contact surfaces on both sides
with epoxy glue, then fasten them together with something that will hold them in place while the glue hardens. Epoxy
glue is stronger than the wood itself; a properly glued epoxy joint will break the wood on one side or the other of the
joint but never at the glue line; so gluing pieces of wood together with epoxy glue is the same as welding them
together; when you’re done, you have one big piece of very strong wood. We use cheap galvanized 2-1/2” long #8
flathead screws or nails to clamp the joints together while the glue hardens, and although we could take them out
afterwards without making the joint any weaker, that’s a lot of work, which I’m personally allergic to, so we just
leave them in.

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Paint enough glue on both sides of your joint so that some squeezes out both sides of the joint when you put the joint
together with screws or nails. Seeing this glue squeeze-out is the only way to know that you have enough glue in the
joint. If you don’t see the glue squeeze out, you may have a dry joint which is weak, and which there is no way to
fix after the fact so it is strong again. It’s a one-shot deal. If you are gluing the plywood end-grain to another piece of
plywood or wood, paint the end-grain piece first, then paint some glue on your other mating piece, then come back
and paint a second coat of glue on the plywood end-grain because it will have soaked all the first coat into the grain.

It is a good idea to let the epoxy-painted areas on any wood-to-wood joint have this “open-joint time”, which means
you paint the glue onto them, then let the glue soak into the two pieces of wood for five minutes or so before you slap
them together and put in screws. If you just throw the joint together as soon as you finish painting the glue on
(without letting it have open-joint time) the excess glue will squeeze out of the joint, then the wood on either side of
the joint will absorb the glue in the joint away from the glued surface, making the glued surface dry and weak. Giving
your glue joints a few minutes of open-joint time makes them strong!

Epoxy is a two-part resin glue that can also be used for fiberglassing (covered next). When you mix the two parts
(called hardener and resin) together in the correct amounts, the glue will remain liquid for a certain time (called the
working time), then start to get hard, then become completely rock-hard. Epoxies are formulated to match
temperature conditions in the work environment; there is a cold-weather epoxy for 60 degrees or below, epoxy for 75
to 85 degrees, and epoxies for above 85 degrees. These are often available as different hardeners that are sold with a
single resin system, and are often called fast hardener (for cold-weather conditions), medium hardener (for room-
temp weather conditions), and slow hardener (for hot weather conditions).

Epoxies do not work the same way as polyester (surfboard) resin does; you cannot mix more hardener in to get
them to set faster, and less hardener in to get them to set more slowly. If you do this, you will simply have a slimy
mess that does not set up at all, and that you have to scrape off and wash with acetone before you can try again!
Epoxies are designed to work only with exact preset mixing ratios (that are different for whichever particular brand
you purchase). In otherwords, you need to mix the epoxy exactly as the directions specify, and not change the mix
ratio. Especially do not mix hardener from one brand of epoxy with resin from another, it may also give you a slimy
mess to clean up.

Slow, regular, and fast refer to the relative time that the mixtures of different hardeners and resin take to gel in your
mixing container, and then to get hard on the surface you apply them to. Generally speaking, warmth makes any
epoxy set up faster, cold makes any epoxy set up more slowly. You would get a slow hardener if you are working in
hot conditions, or if you need a long working time and need the glue to stay liquid a long time before setting-up. You
would get a fast hardener if you were working in cold conditions, or if you needed the glue to set up really fast.

You would be smart to buy small amounts of the different hardeners of the epoxy system you are thinking of working
with, fast, medium, and slow, and try them out in your working temperatures to see how long a working time they
give you, and how fast they gel and harden, before you purchase any large amounts. Using your small sample
amounts of epoxy, glue up some small pieces of plywood and wood, then fiberglass one side of the plywood for
practice. After these have hardened, you can have fun trying to break the glue joints or trying to make dings in the
epoxy fiberglass surface. You will be surprised how much force it takes, and what a super material this stuff is.

IMPORTANT: Epoxy comes in a variety of “systems”. An epoxy system will usually consist of one or more different
types of resin, and two or more different “speeds” of hardener (usually slow, medium, and fast). Each system uses
the same mixing ratio for its resin and hardeners; but this can vary from system to system. You can generally
purchase relatively inexpensive “mixing pumps” for these systems that screw onto the resin cans and give you the
right ratios of resin to hardener for your mix automatically, one pump of hardener to one pump of resin.

IMPORTANT: Each system will have it's own different ratio mixing pumps. These are cheap plastic pumps that screw
into gallon cans that have the resin and hardener in them; they are sold at the same places that you purchase the
epoxy resin, and you need to get them at the same time. Why can't I save money here and just measure and mix my
epoxy by hand instead of buying these inexpensive pumps? Well, epoxy is very sensitive to being mixed at an
incorrect ratio, and if you do so, you may end up with soup, jello, or blobs instead of hardened resin. Also, you can’t
use the pumps from one system for another because they have different mixing ratios. You can’t mix epoxy from one
system with another, and you can’t mix two epoxies from the same system that have different mixing ratios. Well,
you can, but you tend to get epoxy soup, jello, or coagulated blobs as a result, not glue. So settle on a good epoxy
system and stick with it.

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New epoxy pumps; these are for a

5:1 resin-to-hardener ratio epoxy
system. The larger pump screws
into a gallon can, the smaller one
screws into a quart can (make sure
these cans are CLEAN before
putting resin and hardener into
them). Purchase resin in larger
containers (5-gallon size resin and
1-gallon-size hardener) because
it's more economical that way, and
decant it into the cans your mixing
pumps are in for actual measuring
and use.

Two different types of resin with

different mix ratios from the same
manufacturer in a marine supply store.
Blue cans are light viscosity (thinner)
for fiberglassing, and the turquoise are
medium viscosity (thicker) for gluing
and making putty. However, you can
use the light viscosity blue can resin
for gluing and making putty just as
easily. This means you only need one
resin system in the shop to glue and
fiberglass.

Epoxy pumps in use; the worker has

pumped in resin from the bigger
gallon can on the right first (5
pumps), and now is pumping in
hardener from the smaller quart can
on the left (5 pumps). He will then
mix the two THOROUGHLY (until he's
BORED with mixing!), and go apply it
to his project. These pumps are
located on the "Epoxy Bench" which
is a NECESSITY, described next!

Epoxy mixing can in use; the worker has put

colored tape on one side of the rim so that he
can remember to pick it up by the tape side,
and wipe his sticky epoxy brush on the other
side! This keeps hands clean and encourages
an enjoyable epoxy experience rather than
everything stuck to everything else, this is not
fun! =( We like fun =)

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A REALLY GOOD IDEA: THE EPOXY BENCH Make or put up a small bench in a central area of your workshop. This
can be a folding cheap plastic table, a piece of plywood on two sawhorses, you get the idea. It will get filthy and
sticky because this is where you store your mixing cans, cups, epoxy in cans, etc! It gets epoxy dripped on it, then
dirt gets glued to the drips; you get the idea. Every few months we take all the stuff off the bench, and grind our
epoxy bench off with the minigrinder to make it a little flatter. Another easy way to handle this is to cover the bench
with a layer or two of tarpaper stapled down to the bench, then when it gets horrid, just strip it off and put another
layer on. This epoxy bench will keep all the sticky mess in your shop in a discrete area and make it easy to locate
microballoons, fiberglass tape, brushes, etc.

WARNING! Be VERY AWARE that epoxy does something called “exotherming”. This means that if you mix
up a lot of epoxy in a big can (say gallon size), and don’t get it out of the can onto your surfaces fairly
fast, the epoxy in the can will start getting HOTTER. As epoxy gets hotter, the chemical transformation
that turns it hard moves FASTER, and it gets HOTTER because it is getting HOTTER. If you’re concerned
about the $60 per gallon or so you paid for the epoxy, this is what’s called a “negative feedback loop”.

It gets worse FAST, and it is only a matter of seconds sometimes until the can starts to smoke. If you
have enough epoxy in a large enough can and turn your back on it for too long, it will actually start to
burn, not to mention burning your hand if you touch the can. This is also the reason that you DON’T EVER
throw an exotherming can of epoxy into the trash: the trash can may go up in flames a couple of minutes
later! And REALLY, REALLY, DON’T EVER LET EXOTHERMING EPOXY NEAR ACETONE OR LACQUER
THINNER!!! You can die. We told you so. And that wing of the house really was laid out wrong, and you
were thinking of redoing it anyway, right?

You deal with epoxy’s tendency to exotherm by mixing small batches of epoxy at first, until you get used to working
with it. IF a batch of epoxy starts to exotherm, you’ll notice this first because the epoxy in the center of the can will
get gummy and viscous (before it starts to smoke). Don’t put any more of this gummy epoxy on your work when
you see this happening. Stop, put the can down on a dirt or concrete floor away from flammables, clean the piece
you were working on so it has a clean edge for the next batch, clean your brush, squeegee, and hands, take a five-
minute break and a few deep breaths, and start again, this time mixing a little less and learning how to work a little
faster and cleaner. Throw away the exothermed can after it has cooled down completely; it is useless for mixing resin
now.

IMPORTANT: Don’t EVER work in direct sun if you can avoid it! Epoxy in the sun heats up and hardens up
really fast, and can cut your working time by a factor of ten or more. Also, if you’re trying to fiberglass something so
that it is waterproof, epoxy setting up in the sun tends to get little bubbles that are indicative of air passing through
the fiberglss cloth, which means it is not the waterproof barrier you’re intending to create. If you’re working on
something big that can’t be moved inside, then you should take the time to rig some kind of a tent or shade to keep
the sun off the part you’re working on. Or at the very least, do your fiberglassing early in the evening or in the
morning under lights. You also need to keep moisture off anything you’re working on that is outside, so you may need
some kind of tarp anyway to do this.

WARNING! Be AWARE that epoxy, if not measured accurately and mixed thoroughly, will sometimes never
get hard! The only thing worse than epoxy that goes off too fast is epoxy that DOESN’T GO OFF AT ALL!
Now you have a REAL mess to clean up that makes exotherming look like a party. You have to scrape the
epoxy off, then wash the wood surface with a couple changes of acetone and rags, wearing gloves and
using a breather mask so you don’t inhale acetone vapors. This is dangerous to say the least, and there’s
no other way to get unhardened epoxy off. The best way to measure epoxy accurately is buy a set of
mixing pumps; they make these for every epoxy resin system and ratio available, and they are a good
investment and guarantee of good mixes if you use them properly. Read the directions!

Getting wet is a concern if you’re working outside; I’ve had epoxy layups set up for an hour or so and still be sticky
when a torrential rain came down. The next day, after the epoxy had gotten dried-off and baked in the sun for a
couple of hours, it was all hard, just a little milky where the water had puddled. I never was able to test this milky
epoxy quantitatively to see if it had lost strength or adhesion, but it seemed quite hard, and worked all right on the
boat for the next 17 years. However, if your epoxy is still liquid when it starts raining, you need to write it off. Scrape
as much off as you can with rubber gloves on, in the rain, while it is still wet (doesn’t this sound like fun?). After the
rain is gone, let what’s left get hard, then grind it off until it’s smooth and ready to do the job again. Because epoxy
underwater doesn’t set up exactly the same way, or as hard, as epoxy that is dry, this will likely gum up fifty to a
hundred bucks worth of grinding disks before you are back to the bare wood surface you need to have in order to be

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able to start all over. Oh, and you need to wait until the wood is dry to grind it off, which may take a couple of days,
or weeks, depending on how much it rains or dews at night in your location. Is it starting to sound like building tanks
inside a shelter or buying and rigging some tarps to keep them dry might be a good idea? It is!

IMPORTANT: Before you EVER mix any epoxy for glue, putty, or fiberglassing, make absolutely CERTAIN
(and that’s why we put “check marks” next to each item, so you can intelligently check them off this list
until this process becomes automatic with you):

Your work is completely ready to go; that every part is cut, sanded, rounded, pre-drilled with holes, (or
whatever else needs to happen), fitted to the other parts it needs to match up to, and placed close to where it gets
installed. If you have a complex item to make, name and/or number all your parts, and write on the end of a part
“this end connects to the so-and-so”, then assembly will be a breeze. If you have trouble visualizing this, make
yourself a sketch of this that makes sense to you, then consult that sketch while you are assembling the item.
Remember, you can often stop halfway through an item and finish tomorrow, just remember to put temporary braces
on with screws (and NO glue) to hold parts at the correct angles and locations; because the epoxy will set up
overnight and you won’t be able to adjust anything the next day!
Make sure all sawdust and chips are brushed or blown off your parts with compressed air so you don’t get
this stuff incorporated into your glue joints and fiberglass job.
Make sure that all brushes, squeegees, putty and fiberglass tools are clean and ready to work with and
set out near at hand. Make sure they are not sticky from the batch of putty or epoxy from ten minutes ago that no
one bothered to clean off them, or even worse, covered with sharp little snags and lumps that will grab your fiberglass
cloth because the epoxy was allowed to harden overnight into bumps and knots all over the tools.
Make sure that any fiberglass pieces you’re going to use are cut, neatly folded, and weighted down on a
clean sawhorse or other shop surface so they can’t blow off onto the ground.
Make sure screwdriver drill batteries are charged, you have the correct driver bit in them, and that you
have a can or box of the correct screws right next to your work or in your toolbelt nailbags.
If you’re clamping something, have the clamps ready and open to the right distance.
Have something to drink that’s easy to grab sitting somewhere it can’t accidentally get knocked onto your
work and get it wet, in an old glass or bottle that doesn’t care if it gets epoxy boogers all over the outside.
Have all these ready and available: mechanic’s hand cleaner dispenser, a bucket of rinse water for after you
clean off with the hand cleaner, and clean rags to dry your hands on. I’ve gotten epoxy in my eyes before, and simply
gone into the house and rinsed well with warm water out of the sink, with no apparent ill effect afterwards. This
doesn’t work with polyester resin, you can burn your corneas with that stuff.
Don’t have your best iPod out and playing music to work to, because you are going to need to turn it down,
or skip a song, or something, and forget and get epoxy all over the touchpad. This makes an iPod last a very short
time; ask me how I know =( . What does work is to put the iPod into a baggie with its cord coming out the end, and
just get the epoxy on the baggie. This trick works for phones and cellphones also.

Gluing Tricks: Here are some gluing tricks to make the best possible joints, and to make your job easy:

Trick #1: Work cleanly! If you put a piece of colored masking tape on the side of the epoxy mixing can that you will
grab with your fingers, use it to “cue on” when you’re going for the can, and always grab it by that colored tape side,
then always wipe your brush off on the other side, then you have a chance of coming out of an epoxy job with clean
fingers. Treat your squeegee the same way: don’t lay it down in the resin, and if it gets resin on the area you hold it
by, grab a rag and wipe it clean right away. Have small 12” by 12” (or so) scraps of plywood available to use as
“coasters” to set your epoxy can, squeegees, and brush down on, otherwise you will leave all kinds of epoxy
“boogers” around your shop that will harden and have to be scraped or ground off later. If you follow these guidelines,
your squeegee, brush, and can grab surfaces will stay free of sticky epoxy, and your job will be a breeze. Conversely,
if you get your hands sticky, everything tends to go downhill from there, starting with your inability to handle things
without sticking to them. If this happens, STOP, clean off with rags (and hand cleaner/rinse/dry if you got that badly
fouled) and try it again, cleanly this time!

Trick #2: Paint the glue on both of your joint surfaces, then put your brush back in the brush garage (see trick #3)
and come back 1 to 5 minutes later and assemble the joint. This is called “open-joint time”, and will allow glue to soak

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into both your pieces of wood, ensuring a much stronger joint. If you paint the glue on then jam the joint together
quickly before the glue has had time to soak into the wood, all the excess glue will squeeze out of the joint, and then
the wood soaks up the glue that is left in the joint, making the joint dry and relatively weak. This is why we do open-
joint time. If you notice that your wood has really soaked up the glue, put a second coat on and let it sit awhile so
that it looks “glossy” before assembling the joint. You know you did a good job if glue squeezes out all along the joint.
It is not a waste of glue, it is a valuable indication that you have a joint you can depend on!

Trick #3: If an 8-foot long piece of plywood is not long enough, make a longer piece! To make a longer piece of
plywood, you glue two shorter pieces of plywood together with what’s called a butt block. A butt block is simply a
piece of the same thickness plywood that is 12 times as wide as the plywood is thick. This translates to a 6-inch wide
buttblock for ½ inch thick plywood, or an 8-inch wide butt block for ¾ inch thick plywood. The buttblock glues on
directly over the joint between the two pieces of plywood, using screws that don’t go all the way through and out the
far side of the joint; for ¾ inch plywood buttblocks, where there are two thicknesses of ¾ inch plywood (1-1/2 inches
thick), we use 1-1/4-inch long screws to fasten the buttblock.

(Left) Painting epoxy on both

sides of a 3/4" plywood
buttblock. The worker will give
this a few minutes of "open-joint
time" to let the glue soak into the
wood, then will assemble it with
screws. The glue will squeeze out
all around the edges, indicating
that a good glue joint has been
achieved.

(Left) The second piece of plywood

going onto this buttblock; you can see
the screws that have been installed on
the left hand side of the buttblock and
the shiny surface that is the glue.

(Right) Six-year-old Rose screwing

down the second piece of plywood onto
this buttblock; you can see the screws
that have been installed on the side of
the buttblock she's kneeling on.

When the glue is dry on this buttblock,

the result will be a 16-foot long piece
of plywood that is as strong as if it was
made in one piece at the factory.

Trick #4: To make a clean joint after the two pieces have been fastened together and the excess epoxy has squeezed
out of the joint, clean the squeezed-out glue off both sides of the joint with a flexible putty knife and/or rags, then
clean the putty knife off with a rag. Have plenty of rags, put them in the trash when they get too gluey, and don’t
pick up a glue-covered rag by accident. If you do, see trick #6 and clean your hands right away! If you are the type
who doesn’t mind the feel of rubber or thin plastic gloves (I hate them!) you can try using them. Work clean!

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Trick #5: Make a brush “garage”. This is a glass or plastic gallon jar with a screw-on lid. You put about an inch of
acetone and another inch of lacquer thinner, in the bottom of this jar. When you finish painting epoxy in a glue joint
or a fiberglass job, wipe the excess epoxy off the brush into your epoxy can, then put the brush into the brush
garage. Mush it around down there in the solvent until all the epoxy is washed out of the bristles, then just leave it
there (with the lid on) until your next epoxy job. You just take it out the next time you need it, whack it a couple of
times against the leg of a sawhorse to get it dry, then use it. You can keep these “throwaway” brushes going for
months this way, and save yourself a ton of money over actually throwing them away. Note: every so often you will
see your acetone/lacquer thinner mixture in the brush garage getting really thick; this means it’s time to throw it
away and refill the garage with new solvent. If you ignore this, you will notice because the stuff hardens around the
brushes inside the brush garage, and you have to throw the whole thing away. Dispose of this stuff in a conscious and
safe manner, it’s flammable AND somewhat toxic.

(Left) Driving a screw through 3/4" plywood into a piece

of lumber above; this is how all tanks and tank
reinforcing lumber is clamped together while the glue
hardens. The joint above was painted, both sides, with
epoxy, then allowed to have a few minutes of "open joint
time" before it was assembled.

After all the screws along this plywood edge have been
driven in (with the heads slightly countersunk below the
level of the plywood surface), wipe the excess glue off
that has squeezed out, using a rag. This will save you
having to GRIND it off later!

(Right) Pre-drilling all

holes will make
putting in screws
much easier: just
remember to put a
screw in EACH hole!
DON'T be doing this
after mixing epoxy;
get all this "prep
work" done
beforehand, clean all
the sawdust and chips
off the work, have all
your tools ready, THEN
mix the epoxy!

Trick #6: Cleaning your hands and tools: Get some “Simple Orange” or similar brand automotive mechanic’s hand
cleaner, and a bucket of water. After getting epoxy on your hands, put a couple of squirts of the hand cleaner on,
scrub your hands well with it to get all the epoxy loose, then rinse in the water to get the loosened epoxy and hand
cleaner off your hands, and dry with a shop rag. It will completely take the “sticky” from the glue off your hands. DO
NOT EVER, EVER, wash your hands or skin with acetone or any other solvents; you will simply dilute the resin, then
the solvent will take it directly through your skin into your blood stream. This is how they give medications to
hemophiliacs (people who bleed abnormally; they can’t give them a shot because the little hole from the needle will
bleed for hours afterwards), they mix the medication with medically pure acetone and paint it on the patient’s skin.

Trick #7: Get the right tools and teach yourself how to use them. Make some simple stuff first before you tackle your
first tank. Try making a box out of some scrap plywood. Put wheels on it and make a kid’s wagon out of it. Make a
box with straight sides and 90-degree corners, then try and break it to see how good your glue joints were. Learn how
to use the sanders. Have someone who knows saw safety teach you how to use the SkilSaw, because you can really
take a piece of yourself off with one! Get used to using all the tools first, before you have sticky glue on everything as
well making it ten times as difficult. And when you notice you have sticky glue all over you, you should start thinking

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about what it would take to Work Clean! Working clean simply means only having a touch or two of sticky spots on
your hands and clothing after a couple hours of working with epoxy. Not always attainable, but as they say “Worth the
trouble!”.

Trick #8: Install adequate wooden stiffeners that are large enough on the outsides of your tanks, at top or tank
and at the midheight level, so that tanks do not bulge and break the corners. Use the PDF CAD drawing file as a
guide for what size of stiffener and where to locate it on the tank. Glue and screw these stiffeners on before
fiberglassing your flat tank sides and bottom; for it’s a huge amount of work to glue them on after the panels are
fiberglassed: every single screw hole on the inside of the tank has to be puttied, then fiberglassed over with a little
piece of cloth, then fill-coated just like the fiberglass. Remember to put stiffeners on before fiberglassing!

3. Filleting and Sanding (and NOT Sanding!)

Fillets are next because they’re the next thing you do after gluing the pieces together, but often before the final
fiberglassing is done. A fillet is a rounded bead of epoxy/microballoon putty you put into a corner between two pieces
of plywood with a wooden tongue depressor. The rounded end of the tongue depressor makes exactly the right radius.
It not only helps glue the corner together more strongly, but ALSO gives you a very easy corner to fiberglass later.
There are two ways to do this:

#1. Put the fillet in, doing the cleanest, most careful job you can do. To do this, you mix up your microballoon/
epoxy putty with a putty knife on a clean piece of plywood about the size of a clipboard (a cheap plastic clipboard
actually works very well for this putty mixing board). Mix the microballoons into the epoxy with a 3” putty knife in a
place that is not windy (microballoons are not only expensive, they are very light, and will blow away off your
clipboard to be lost in the dirt if you try to mix them in the wind) to a consistency like stiff whipped cream, so they will
hold a “stiff peak”. Now, move over to your work surface and use a standard ¾’ wide tongue depressor (TD) to apply
the putty into the corner between your two pieces of plywood or boards.

Tuck gobs of putty into the corner with the tip of the TD and wipe them back and forth, until you have a wad of
putty in the corner for about 18” or so of the corner’s length. This does not have to be neat, so don’t worry if there’s
excess here and there. Go back over any “holes” and make sure there is excess, because you can’t scrape it off and
make the joint neat at the same time in the next step unless there is more than necessary in the joint now.

Then, putting the TD flat against one of the sides that make the corner, AND 90 degrees from the corner, scrape off
the excess putty on this side by moving the TD along the joint, and wipe the excess you gathered back off onto the
putty board. Next, put the TD flat against the other side, and scrape off the excess putty on that side. If you do this
right, the fillet that’s left will be smooth, round, and require a minimum of sanding. If your fillet has holes in it, apply
more putty next time before you wipe the excess off. If it has bumps, you didn’t wipe carefully, and this will cost you
later with more sanding than if you’d left a neat, smooth fillet. Once you get good at this, you will be very fast, and
can apply tens of feet of fillets in a matter of ten or twenty minutes.

To the right of the tongue

depressor in this picture is a
section of newly-applied fillet that
hasn't been "wiped" yet. To the
left of the tongue depressor is a
section of fillet that has been
"wiped". See how “clean” the
wiped section looks, and how
“messy” the unwiped one looks?

The tongue depressor is moving

from the left to the right in the
picture.

Mix small batches of putty at first until you get the hang of it, because it will harden up faster if it’s left in a big lump
on the putty board while you are messing around with a few inches of fillet, trying to get it perfect. DON’T BOTHER!

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You will get good at this quickly, and you’ll be able to just rip when you’re laying down a fillet. After you’re done you
let it harden overnight or so until it’s completely dry and hard, then sand the bumps off before you put any fiberglass
over this corner. You will probably be wise to start out doing it this way until you get some fiberglassing experience
under your belt and are ready to try #2 which follows:

#2. Put the fillet in with your fiberglass pieces all measured, cut, weighted down and ready to go on, and put the
fiberglass right on over the wet epoxy fillet BEFORE the fillet hardens and needs to be sanded. I’ll talk about this in
much more detail in the section “Putting Together The Pieces”, where I explain why you do NOT want to assemble a
tank before fiberglassing if you can help it. This avoids needing to sand and blow off the fillets before fiberglassing
them, and saves A TON of time, but it is not for the fainthearted or those with little experience with fiberglass and
epoxy resin. Do this the #1 way several times before EVER trying it the #2 way, and try it on a small piece of work
the first time you try #2.

4. Fiberglassing
The most important thing to know about fiberglassing is: you want to fiberglass pieces of plywood when they are
horizontal. then assemble them into structures if you can. You do not want to assemble a tank before fiberglassing
if you can help it. This is unless you have a ten-ton crane the way we do, and can rotate the 2,000 pound tank so
each surface you’re working on is horizontal when you fiberglass it. I work on boats this way, and while it’s worth the
extra trouble it takes to turn the boat so my surface to be fiberglassed is horizontal, I also fiberglass everything that
it’s possible to fiberglass flat on a bench in the shop, before ever assembling it onto the boat. When you understand
how fiberglass works, you’ll also understand why you want to do it this way.

NEVER get yourself into a situation where you need to fiberglass vertical surfaces; this is like those disclaimers in car
commercials: “Professional driver, closed course”. Fiberglassing upside-down on ceilings is kind of like Evil Knievel
jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle, don’t try it unless you’re him.

The easy way to accomplish this is to put the pieces of one tank side together with buttblocks, then install all your
2X stiffeners onto that tank side while it’s laying flat on a couple of sawhorses, then fill the fastener holes wiuth
epoxy/microballoon putty, let them dry and sand them, then fiberglass that entire tank side while it’s still laying
horizontally on the horses. After making all your tank sides (and interior divider pieces if your tank has them), you
assemble the finished tank sides and other pieces into a tank. After assembly, you put fillets in the corners and a 4"
fiberglass tape over the top of the fillet. It is so easy this way, and each tank side (the biggest and heaviest single
thing you have to deal with) is only about a sixth of the weight of the finished tank!

When someone says they’re “fiberglassing” something, they’re talking about two components: fiberglass cloth that
goes onto a surface, and some kind of resin that you use to saturate it with. The resin hardens and gets strong, both
bonding the fiberglass cloth to the surface under it, and making the surface very hard, waterproof, and puncture-
resistant at the same time. Fiberglass cloth is actually made from glass, the same stuff they make windows from.
Although brittle and easily broken when in the form of a window, glass becomes very flexible when formed into a thin
thread, then spun into yarn and woven into fiberglass cloth.

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Rolling out 6 ounce, 50-inch wide

fiberglass cloth on a 4-foot wide sheet
of plywood. Glass EVERYTHING YOU
CAN while it’s flat, because it’s
miserable work at any other angle but
horizontal. Working on glass
horizontally is like a dream!

The plywood MUST be clean and free of

dirt, specks of sawdust, and anything
else that could cause a bump.
Fiberglass cloth does NOT go over
bumps and make a waterproof surface;
the whole point of fiberglassing wood!

There are other special-purpose forms of fiberglass: matt, roving, biaxial, triaxial, and many types of fiberglass fabrics
for use in boats, airplanes, and space shuttles. We will be using the most common and affordable forms of fiberglass:
6-ounce cloth and some 24-ounce roving. 6-ounce fiberglass cloth has a texture like fairly fine burlap; you can see the
individual threads it’s made from quite easily. It feels silky to the touch, but don’t let this fool you into rubbing it onto
your cheek; it is glass, and you will embed many fine glass slivers into your sensitive skin when you do this.

When you work with fiberglass, long pants, shoes with socks, and long-sleeve shirts are advisable. This is because the
little fibers (little glass needles!) that come off the fiberglass will get on your skin if the skin isn’t covered completely.
This doesn’t bother some people, but makes others itch like crazy. When you take these clothes off, store and wash
them separately from any other clothes, because small bits of glass fibers get stuck in the clothes and migrate to
other non-work clothes in the washing machine and dryer, making them itchy too!

WARNING! You must use a breathing mask or respirator of some kind whenever working with fiberglass cloth, even
when working in the open air, because small bits of glass fibers shed off the cloth and float around in the air for you to
suck in. These fibers will stick in your lung surfaces and will not come out; breathing fiberglass dust can create what’s
called silicosis, which is a nasty destructive lung disease. Wearing long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and a good
breathing mask, you are ready to work safely with fiberglass.

This worker has a good quality paper mask ready for

use if he cuts a piece of wood or fiberglass, to protect
against getting sawdust or fiberglass dust in his lungs.

IF he works clean, he can avoid getting sticky stuff on

his bare arms, and can avoid getting his T-shirt glued to
his stomach (didn't know THAT could happen, did you?).

A phenomenon observed in fiberglass shops where the

workers have a sense of humor is a pair of pants that
has gotten so coated with resin drips that they will
stand up in a corner all by themselves; the erstwhile
owner has no body hair on his legs, it all having been
removed in the process of removing the pants!!

Several layers and/or types of fiberglass are often combined, laid down dry, and then “wet out”, or saturated with
resin, to make what’s called a “layup”, a finished fiberglass covering for a wood structure like a boat or fish tank, or a

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fiberglass part for a boat or car. When someone says something is “fiberglassed”, they are referring to the fact that
the dry fiberglass cloth needs to be wet out with a resin to make the complete “fiberglass” job or item.

There are many kinds of resin; the two most common are epoxy and polyester. Polyester resin is the stuff they make
surfboards and fiberglass boats with, it is the resin found in Bondo and other car body fillers; and it has a distinctive
sharp odor from the methyl ethyl ketone, esters, and solvents in the resin. This resin will burn your skin if you get it
on you, and the hardener (methyl ethyl ketone peroxide in dimethyl pthalate, or MEKP) is a strong oxidizer that is like
battery acid on your skin. Polyester resin is only one-third the strength of epoxy resin, and has about one-tenth the
adhesion to a wood surface that epoxy resin does.

This means that not only will your polyester fiberglass job peel off the wood subsurface relatively easily, but also that
you need to use three times as much of both resin and fiberglass cloth to get the same strength as if you are using
epoxy and fiberglass cloth. This is why, although epoxy resin costs from 50-100% more per gallon than polyester, it
is actually cheaper. To get the same strength as a polyester “layup” using three layers of fiberglass cloth and three
gallons of polyester resin, you only need to use one layer of fiberglass cloth with one gallon of epoxy resin. Although
your epoxy resin costs twice as much, you only use one-third as much resin and one-third as much cloth. Your
resulting epoxy/fiberglass job, for the same strength, costs half as much as if you’d done the same thing with three
times as much polyester resin and fiberglass cloth, and adheres to the substrate (the wood) much better.
So, unless you are in a situation where fiberglass cloth is nearly free and epoxy resin costs five times as much as
polyester, we don’t need to talk about polyester resin again. If you are forced to use polyester, use breather masks,
rubber gloves, good ventilation, protective eyewear, and don’t get it on your skin, in addition to all the protective
measures mentioned before for use with epoxy resin systems. AND, you STILL NEED TO USE EPOXY TO GLUE THE
WOOD-TO-WOOD JOINTS!! Polyester resin is NOT a glue, and will hold wooden joints together about as well as
chewing gum.

These are the steps involved in a successful fiberglass job with epoxy:
Number One: Build it right! Whatever you’re fiberglassing needs to be properly designed, then soundly and
strongly built first. We are not saying you have to build it first and then fiberglass it, because we just spoke about the
advantages of fiberglassing parts first while flat and then assembling them. We are referring to the need for the joints
in your structure to be properly glued and fastened together. The thin layers of fiberglass we use impart minimal
structural strength and will not make a weak structure strong. The strength in your tank or sprouting table comes
from the wood (which is relatively cheap), not from the fiberglass (which is relatively expensive).

If you don’t glue your structure together correctly, the fiberglass will just be a waste of time and money. We use thin
fiberglass because it adequately waterproofs the plywood and gives it a hard skin that is difficult to puncture. This way
doesn’t use a lot of expensive resin and fiberglass, but gives you the good result of a durable and waterproof tank.

Number Two: Prepare it right! Before you can fiberglass it, whatever you build needs:
To be dry. All wood surfaces need to be dry before you can fiberglass them. If it’s wet the fiberglass won’t stick,
and the resin may not completely get hard.
To have all the holes, cracks and crevices filled with epoxy/microballoon putty. Fiberglassing a surface
does not fill gaps, cracks, or holes. Gaps from holes or crevices underneath the fiberglass may mean leaks into the
plywood later, which cause rot and premature failure of tanks.
To be sanded smooth then dusted or vacuumed or blown off with compressed air to get it clean. If there’s a
bunch of junk on the surface, and you put fiberglass cloth over it, it will result in bumps and voids that make a poor
glass job and will promote leaks in the future (if not right away).
To be in the shade. If you work in the sun, you not only have made it almost impossible for yourself with resin
that is setting up within minutes of application, but have also made a poor and leaky glass job.
To be reachable (Q: How do you fiberglass the middle of an 8-foot wide tank? A: with four-foot long arms!). All
preparation for accessibility (ie, scaffolds, stepladders, painter’s planks, etc) needs to happen before you can get the
fiberglass cut and ready to go on, and must happen before you ever mix any resin.
Your fiberglass cloth needs to have been stored so that it can’t get wet, or even damp. Fiberglass cloth that has
gotten wet once cannot ever be completely dried out so that it is as strong as new, dry cloth, and this may weaken
your glass job or the bond of the fiberglass to the wood.

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Number Three: Cut and apply the fiberglass dry first!

Roll out the dry fiberglass cloth on your clean horizontal surface, cut it, and weight it down with clean weights
that won’t shed junk onto it; dirty weights such as rocks can make a mess when you come by with the resin.
If your surface is wider than the width of the fiberglass cloth, roll out a second piece, making a 2” overlap with
the first one. More overlap than this is unnecessary, less is OK, but don’t get less than an inch or so of overlap.
If you’re fiberglassing 48” wide tank sides, buying 50” wide 6 ounce fiberglass cloth is perfect: you won’t
have to use two pieces and then throwaway the cutoff strip.
Take your DRY (not sticky!) plastic or rubber squeegee and lightly squeegee the dry fiberglass cloth down,
starting from the middle of your piece and going long ways out to the ends to eliminate bubbles and wrinkles.
After squeegeeing out the dry cloth with your dry squeegee, you will sometimes notice you still have a
“bubble” of cloth in some location. You put clean weights on the edges and ends of the fiberglass cloth when you first
laid it out, just lift these weights and squeegee the cloth underneath them, then put them back down in the same
place. You end up with a piece of cloth that is squeegeed flat and weighted down. Now your cloth stays in place while
you are applying the resin to it.
Also, if it is windy, trim the edges of the fiberglass cloth closely to the edge of the plywood surface you’re
fiberglassing so it doesn’t blow up and wrap onto the top of itself when wet with resin; this makes a real mess!

Rolling out 50' wide glass cloth onto a Pulling out a thread; this gives you a
tank side to be fiberglassed. straight line to cut on with your
scissors so you don't cut a crooked
Number Four: Wetting-out the fiberglass! edge and waste expensive cloth.

After making sure that you have all your tools ready (squeegees, scissors, rags, hand cleaner, etc), and your
fiberglass cloth is squeegeed down dry on your plywood and weighted so it won’t blow away, you can mix resin and
begin fiberglassing. This is what’s known as the laminating coat; you are laminating the fiberglass to the wood surface
underneath.

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After rolling out the fiberglass cloth onto

your work, squeegee it out DRY so it's flat
and all the bubbles are gone. This will
make it MUCH easier to wet out and
squeegee when wet. Next, put CLEAN
weights on all the corners so it doesn't
blow off onto the dirty shop floor!

These are the fiberglassing tools you

will need for wetting out the fiberglass
cloth: sharp scissors, 4-inch, 2-inch,
and 1-inch disposable brushes (for
larger or smaller jobs), yellow plastic
squeegees with clean edges.

If you can feel any “snags” on the

edges of the squeegees with your bare
finger, sand them off with the 120 grit
sandpaper shown here before mixing
any resin.

You also need a handful of clean rags

(no sticky epoxy on them!) available.

Start by mixing small amounts of resin, until you know how much you can comfortably work with in the time
you have before it starts to gel and get hard (what’s known as “pot life”). If you have a fast hardener and/or a
relatively fast setting epoxy system, you will want to mix smaller batches. Also, until you are experienced with how
much resin a job requires, if you mix larger batches, you may find that you just mixed a gallon of resin when you only
needed a quart, and have to throw away the other three quarts.
Don’t mix until you are completely ready to commit the time necessary to do the job. If you have a two-hour
job, don’t mix resin half an hour before the cook calls lunch. DON’T EVER WALK AWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF
MIXING A BATCH OF RESIN, to answer the phone, get a drink of water, etc. You run the chance of not
remembering how much of what you have already put into your mixing can, and either adding more, not enough, or
going ahead and mixing what you think is both parts of your epoxy when you haven’t even added the hardener yet
(my trick!). If you ever do this, throw it away and start over!
Wet it out: With your plywood surface horizontal, start in the middle of the workpiece, and pour about half your
first mixed batch of resin out onto the surface. Take your yellow plastic squeegee (or rubber, or other cheap plastic
squeegee), and spread the resin left and right, left and right, with repetitive movements of your hand and arm,
holding the squeegee at a slight angle towards your direction of hand movement, and only using a slight pressure
downwards on the cloth (1/2 to 1 pound or so). If you have a 4-foot wide piece of plywood as often happens, work
from both sides.

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Move pools of resin around on the work surface with the squeegee until it has contacted all the fiberglass cloth.
You will see the fiberglass cloth start becoming transparent as the resin saturates it. When the cloth has turned from
the white it is when dry so it is completely transparent with no white strands showing so that you can clearly see the
plywood underneath, you have completely saturated the cloth. Check for any little places it still shows white, and
squeegee the resin back over that place until it turns clear. The only time a place stays white, and won’t saturate
and become transparent is if the cloth got wet somehow; such a place will never get completely “clear” when
saturated. It’s OK: just go ahead and finish the job, and try to keep your cloth drier next time. Now it’s time for the
next part of this process.

(Right) Pouring mixed resin onto the

middle of a workpiece. Each worker
will squeegee the resin over the top of
the fiberglass cloth, working from the
middle out towards the edge nearest
them, and towards one or both ends of
the workpiece.

You can see a little bit of "clear" by the

yellow squeegee where the fiberglass
cloth has begun to wet out and become
transparent.

(Right) More cloth has been "wet

out" and is now transparent, workers
are moving the puddles of resin from
the middle towards both ends of the
workpiece, pushing down LIGHTLY.

You can see white streaks and spots

where the cloth is not fully "wet out"
yet, and the workers will squeegee
resin back and forth over those white
areas until they do wet out and
become completely transparent.

Note: If you’ve moved the puddles of resin around and around, and there still is an area of the cloth that
is white, or ghostly white, and you’ve moved the resin over that area repeatedly, and the area is still not completely
clear so you can see the plywood underneath, then you are fiberglassing with cloth that is, or was at some time, wet
in that area. You're stuck with this, because there's no way to fix it: keep your cloth dry next time until you use it.
Squeegee it out: If you’ve kept your fiberglass dry and followed instructions so far, you have a saturated piece
of fiberglass cloth that looks quite clear, and you can see the wood grain underneath easily. You’ll notice that the resin
is pooled up and very thick in some places and not as thick in other places. To fix this, and to leave only the amount
of resin in the cloth that is necessary for best strength and waterproofness, take your squeegee and squeegee from
the center of your workpiece out towards one end with slightly more downwards pressure on the cloth (about 3-4 lbs
or so). This slight extra pressure will squeeze all the excess resin out of the cloth and towards the dry end of your
workpiece.

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After finishing an area with this technique, you will be able to clearly see the cloth “grain” and although the cloth is
still transparent and wet out with the resin, you have removed all the excess resin and moved it towards the dry end
of your work where you will now use it to wet out that area. Squeegeeing the resin out like this uses the minimum
amount of expensive resin, and makes your job stronger than leaving those fat pools of resin on the surface. It also
makes it look nice and professional!

You can see through the cloth to the

wood grain underneath. This means
the cloth is fully "wet out". You can
also see puddles just above and to
the left of the yellow squeegee which
indicate that there's WAY too much
resin in that area. We'll describe what
to do to correct this situation next.

Notice that the squeegee is clean

except for about 3/4" near the edge
of the blade, and the worker's hand is
clean. This is the result of working
clean; everything’s nice and CLEAN!

Repeat this process of putting resin on, wetting out the fiberglass cloth and squeegeeing the excess resin out
until you reach the end of your work piece. Some anticipation is needed here, because if you mix too much, and dump
a bunch more resin than you need onto the work near the end, you will just have to squeegee it off again into your
mixing can and throw it away. So, in addition to only mixing small batches as you near either end of your work piece,
just put a little resin on at a time so you don’t have to scrape a bunch back off.

If you have small areas of work that you can’t easily use a squeegee on, or parts of the work that are
vertical surfaces, you can apply resin with a 3” or 4” brush, then wipe the extra epoxy off the brush into the mixing
can and use the now-dry brush as a squeegee to flatten bubbles and spread epoxy from thick spots to dry spots. This
is how we squeegee down the fiberglass in any corners over the tops of fillets, whether the fillets are wet or dry.

Mix carefully towards the end of the job: mix just the right amount of resin. As you near the end of each
job/panel you are fiberglassing, you may need to mix small/smaller batches of resin so you don’t end up with a bucket
of resin and nowhere to put it but the trash can! Make sure you have squeegeed everything out as much as possible,
not leaving any puddles of resin on your surface, before you mix your last couple of batches of resin for this job. This
way, you attempt to finish up with no resin left over, no “dry” areas in the cloth/plywood, and no excess puddles of
resin at the end of your panel that you need to squeegee off onto the shop floor or into a trash bucket.

You’re DONE (!!) when there are no white spots indicating that the cloth hasn’t been saturated there yet, and
you can see the wood clearly behind the cloth, and you can see the cloth grain clearly on the whole work piece, and
there are no puddles of resin (which show up as big glossy spots on the cloth where you can’t see the cloth grain),
and. Now clean up.

Number Five: Glass job cleanup!

After you’re DONE, wipe all the epoxy off any brushes into the mixing can(s) and put the brushes back into the
acetone/lacquer thinner mixture inside the brush garage, mushing them around to get the epoxy off them.

Wipe ALL the epoxy off the squeegees with a rag until they’re dry and clean. If you leave a little epoxy on
the squeegee each time, it will build up to the point the squeegee is unuable, or will give you a poor glass job.
Even cheap squeegees are a couple of bucks each, and throwing them away each time adds up. Check the
squeegee’s edge with your finger before you use it the next time. If you can feel a little “snag” with your finger,
just run a piece of 120-grit sandpaper over it to smooth it down before using it again.

Clean off your hands (Gluing Tricks #6).

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Clean off the cat, who walked under the tank side you were working on at just the wrong moment. Don’t use
acetone, this will result in a flammable and grumpy cat, so use the mechanic’s hand cleaner and water. Wear thick
leather gloves if you have to. The dog didn’t notice, or can clean itself off (yes, you guessed, I am a cat person).

The first time you fiberglass, you’re thinking so hard about doing the job right you may get resin into your
slippers, shoes, on your pants, shirt, etc. Get these things off before the resin hardens up because they will get
glued to you when the resin hardens, and will remove skin when you try to remove them. Use the mechanic’s
hand cleaner on the parts of your body they were starting to get glued to. Try to work more cleanly next time.

Number Six: Fill-coating the fiberglass:

After the laminating coat is completely dry to the touch, you can put on the fill coat. The fill coat fills in the
grainy-appearing surface of the fiberglass that is left after the laminating coat and gives you a smooth glossy
surface that’s ready to sand and paint, or just to use. Depending on how thickly you roll on the fill coat, you may
need two fill coats to completely fill in the cloth weave.

Use a good 9” roller handle with a short-nap cheap 9” roller, and a cheap DEEP metal or plastic roller pan.
Stay away from foam rollers unless you’re absolutely SURE they won’t disintegrate when they get soaked with
epoxy (most do!).

Mix small batches until you’re sure how much resin you can handle at a time. Mix the resin in a can, then pour
into your deep roller pan. Roll the resin thickly onto your work surface, then roll back over it several times with
strokes in different directions to even it out. This is NOT painting, where you are trying to put on a relatively thin
coat and prevent runs or drips. This is a horizontal surface (hopefully!), and you can roll on a thick coat that can
fill the grain of the fiberglass cloth completely in one pass. If you do, you won’t have to put on a second coat.

Even if you are going to assemble this flat piece with several other pieces into a tank, you should fill-coat it
now while it’s horizontal, as it may be vertical later, and will require two or three fill coats to completely fill
then. This is because you can’t put a fill coat on a vertical surface as thickly as you can now when it’s horizontal.
The “glossy” surface on the already-
fiberglassed plywood to the right is
the fill coat. You can tell if you got
enough of a fill coat applied when the
“weave” of the cloth vanishes
completely (or nearly so).

This gives you a non-stick surface

that is waterproof and strong as
possible without using more resin
than necessary.

Get your surfaces flat to fill coat

them!

5. Putting Together The Pieces

You do not want to assemble the individual parts of a tank before fiberglassing if you can help it, unless you have a
ten-ton crane and can rotate the heavy tank so each surface you’re working on is horizontal when you fiberglass it.
So, most of us (without crane) will follow the following assembly procedure after we’ve built our tank pieces,
fiberglassed them while flat on sawhorses, and put the fill coat on them while flat on sawhorses.

The only exceptions to this are that: 1. You will assemble any sides of the tank that are longer than 8 feet
(standard plywood length) with buttblocks located on the outside of the side as shown previously before
fiberglassing that side on the inside, and 2. You will assemble the bottom of the tank, if it is more than one sheet
of plywood, with temporary buttblocks screwed (but not glued on) from the outside of the tank, then fiberglassing the
bottom on the inside with 6 ounce fiberglass cloth plus 6-inch wide 24 ounce roving or 18-ounce triaxial cloth on the
seams between the sheets of plywood.

When the tank is completely assembled and all seams are fiberglassed on the inside, you will “flip” the tank over,
round the edges all around the bottom, and fiberglass the entire bottom of the tank with 6 ounce fiberglass cloth

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going 4 inches up the sides of the tank, plus 6-inch wide 24 ounce roving or 18-ounce triaxial cloth on the seams
between the sheets of plywood.

If you don’t bother, the tank bottom will condense water out of the ground underneath it, and rot even treated
plywood within a year or two. The epoxy/fiberglass on the bottom of the tank encapsulates it so that no moisture can
enter the plywood, even if the entire tank is sitting in a puddle of rainwater. This means a long life for your tank.

Tank bottom for an 8-foot by 16-

foot tank, fiberglassed, fill coats
applied and dry, and ready for tank
sides to be installed next.

The “whitish” bands you see

running across the tank bottom are
6-inch wide 18-ounce “triaxial”
cloth over the butts in the plywood.
This is the ONE place you DON’T
use buttblocks: because one side of
this butt joint is inside the fish
tank, and the other side is on the
bottom, which MUST also be
fiberglassed for waterproofing!

Assembly:

After the fill coat(s) is completely dry to the touch, you can assemble the pieces of your tank. We start with
the bottom of the tank set flat on strong sawhorses, with the sawhorses set so you can reach all the screw
locations around the edges and inside the tank from the bottom with the battery screwgun. Predrill clearance
holes for the screws at 8” or so apart on all parts of the tank. You need to have planned out how the pieces
overlap, in other words, which piece goes on top and which on the bottom, and so on. Install one side of the tank
first onto the bottom, and put temporary braces of 1x2’s with screws or something similar to hold it upright at
each end. You will probably need at least two people to maneuver a 4-foot by 16-foot long tank side up onto the
tank bottom into its correct location. Having more people makes it easier and safer.

Put glue on both mating surfaces: tank bottom and tank side, before lifting the tank side up into place. This
of course makes it extremely slippery once you place the two glue surfaces together, and also makes picking up
the tank side without getting epoxy all over your hands somewhat problematical. Don’t worry, it is possible. After
you have two or three of these under your belt, it will seem like a breeze, and the nightmare of the first sticky
tank side going onto the first sticky tank bottom (or onto the dirt shop floor) will be a hazy memory.

Move the tank side so that one end of it matches up EXACTLY with the end of the tank bottom, and, while a
couple of strong people (or temporary 1X2 braces) hold the tank side up and keep it from falling off the tank
bottom onto the ground, where the glued surfaces will get covered with dirt and gravel, meaning you need to start
all over, put in one 2-1/2” #8 flathead screw (the “standard” fastener for this type of tank construction) there.
Next, put in one screw midway between the first screw and the other end of the tank, aligning the side of the tank
flush with the edge of the tank bottom plywood at the same time. You may have to shove the tank side in or out
to get it to line up. Put a third screw into this joint at the far end from the first screw you installed, again lining up
the edges of tank bottom and side before screwing. Now your tank side is nominally connected to the tank bottom
by these three screws, and you need to put in the rest of the screws.

To put in the rest of the screws, you first put in a screw that is located halfway between one end screw and
the middle screw you already put in, pushing the tank side in or out to align it with the edge of the tank bottom
first. There are two of these: a screw halfway between your middle screw and each end screw. This now has your
tank side aligned with the tank bottom in five locations where the five screws are. Usually this is enough to make
the tank side reasonably straight and aligned with the tank bottom. If it’s not, just put in additional screws in

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locations where the side and bottom are not yet aligned, pushing the side into alignment first. When the side of
the tank reasonably follows the bottom of the tank, put in all the rest of the screws.

Tank bottom with the first side

glued all along its bottom. Both
side and bottom were completely
fiberglassed when flat on
sawhorses, then fillcoated, then
assembled as shown.

IMPORTANT: When you install a side of the tank, you either need to install the ends and inside bulkheads of the
tank at the same time to keep it at a 90-degree angle to the bottom, or you need to install temporary braces that
you can remove later when you do install the ends and inside bulkheads.

Why is this? Well, imagine just leaving the tank side where it is, and then the epoxy glue setting up. It will be
solidly fastened there, and when you try to install a tank end that has a 90-degree angle corner onto the tank
side, which may have had it’s glue set up at an 85-degree angle, you will find that you can’t move the tank side,
and have to trim a chunk off the tank end. Now, your tank will have an 85-degree angle corner in it, which will not
only make it look wonky, but will throw off everything else you glue onto the tank. Just get everything 90 degrees
and you’ll have a much easier time.

Tank bottom and side with interior

tank partition installed.

Note diagonal braces at each end of

tank side to hold it at an angle of
90 degrees to tank bottom while
the epoxy glue sets.

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Tank bottom, side, interior tank

partition, with second tank side
installed.

Note diagonal brace in center to

top of partition to hold it at an
angle of 90 degrees to tank side
while the epoxy glue sets.

Tank bottom, side, interior tank

partition, second tank side, with
additional interior partition being
installed.

Glue is set, nothing is going to

move now, so no more bracing is
required. Each piece that goes in
now was either mea

Same tank: all partitions installed,

fittings installed and ready to be
filleted-in, and seams ready to be
filleted and taped (described next).

Each one of these pieces is welded to

the others with epoxy glue that fills
the joint spaces. If your joints are not
tight, you need to do a better job on
them, OR fill them with epoxy and
microballoon putty before trying to
fillet and tape them, because they
will be WEAK and BREAK. The
strength of your tank is in the
JOINTS, NOT the fiberglass!

Final Inside Seam Filleting And Fiberglassing After Assembly:

After all the tank pieces have been assembled together, and the glue on all the joints is completely dry to
the touch, you can start filleting seams and fiberglassing them. This completes the final waterproofing of the tank.
Pick any joint you want to start on, and sand it lightly for about 3” onto the plywood on both sides with a piece of

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36-grit hand sandpaper to take off any snags or bumps that could catch your fiberglass cloth and make leaks.
Sweep up sanding dust, then blow joints clean with compressed air, or vacuum out after all joints are sanded.

Taping a joint over a “wet”

microballoon fillet. If you’re
uncomfortable taping over a wet
fillet, you need to let the fillet set up
hard, then sand it smooth and get all
the dust off before you apply the 4-
inch wide fiberglass tape.

Your joints need to be tight, so you

need to do a better job on them, OR
fill them with epoxy and microballoon
putty before trying to fillet and tape
them, because they will be WEAK and
BREAK. The strength of your tank is
in the JOINTS, NOT the fiberglass!

Mix epoxy/microballoon putty according to instructions previously given, and fillet all joints and in all
corners between all partitions, tank sides, and tank bottom. If you are confident enough by this time to try
fiberglassing over wet putty, have 3” or 4” wide 6 oz fiberglass tapes cut to fit all joints, with about 1” overlap at
each end. You can get this tape from the same place as you bought the fiberglass cloth from (using this
premanufactured tape is easiest and the least amount of work), or you can cut pieces of tape from your roll of
fiberglass cloth (this is the most work).

The first time you try this “wet fillet taping”, plan on only doing a single joint from end to end. Fillet the
joint, then roll out your 3” of 4” fiberglass tape dry onto the joint and centered on the joint (remember, you cut it
to length and had it all ready before you mixed the fillet putty?). When the tape is laid out onto the joint, with a
2” or 3” brush apply epoxy to your tape to wet it out. When it is wet, wipe the brush clean on the edge of your
mixing can, then use the dry brush to squeegee the bubbles out of the fiberglass tape and flatten it. It should look
neat after you’re done, with no white dry areas or big glossy puddles of resin. If you don’t get this perfect the first
time, don’t worry, you’ll get better with each seam you do.

If you’re still energetic after your first seam, mix some more putty and keep going on the next seam, and
the next, and so on. If you’re really a maniac about this, and are GOOD at it, you can fillet AND tape the inside of
a multi-compartment large tank in six hours or so from one end to the other.

If you had trouble taping over the wet epoxy fillet and don’t want to try doing more until you have more
experience, you CAN do it in two steps: fillet the joints, let them dry overnight, and sand the bumps off, blow or
vacuum the dust off again, then tape the seam. Although this may be easier if you had a hard time when you
tried taping the wet fillet, it requires much more of your labor, and you have to wait for the fillets to harden at
least a day before you can sand them. This makes the tank construction process take longer.

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Putting the round patches on the end

of a partition which has already been
“taped” on both sides.

When the round patches are on, this

will be a strong and waterproof joint.
The round patches are 4-inch
diameter patches cut from scrap 6-
ounce fiberglass cloth.

Starting to “wet out” the round

patches on the end of a partition
which has already been “taped” on
both sides.

Rather than “painting” strokes with

the brush, you will use “mushing”
strokes where you just push the
brush on the top of the patch until it
wets through.

If you don’t finish taping the whole tank in one operation and have to resume again the next day,
REMEMBER to sand off the sharp and bumpy edges at the ends of the tape you put on the day before. If you just
fiberglass over these without sanding them smooth first, you will end up with big bubbles under the next piece of
tape that goes over the top of these sharp edges (equals leaks!).

If you have noticed any bubbles (these look white, and are obviously an area where the fiberglass came up off
the surface and air got in underneath, despite your attention and best efforts) in any of your fiberglass tapes or
the areas you fiberglassed while horizontal in the shop, you need to do the following to MAKE SURE the bubble
does not become a leak through your fiberglass into your plywood (which will rot the plywood from the inside and
make the entire thing a waste of your time): cut the bubble out with a razor knife. Sand the edges of the bubble
so they are smooth, then cut 2 pieces of fiberglass cloth that are 2” bigger than the bybble on all edges, wet them
out and let it harden. Do this with all the bubbles you can find in the tank. Guess what? If you just do a careful,
methodical job of fiberglassing the tank to begin with, you won’t have to repair any of these bubbles!

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Finishing up a corner patch. This

corner will have a total of three
round patches applied: one that
is mostly on this side, one that is
mostly on the other side, and one
in the middle.

The finished corner patch. It’s

been squeegeed down with a
relatively dry brush until all the
bubbles are out.

You will come back and sand the

“pricklies” off with a piece of 50-
grit “handpaper” after it’s
completely hard, then put fill
coat(s) on it and on the tapes on
either side of it to make them
slick and glossy.

After finishing filleting and taping all the seams inside the tank (and this includes tape over filled screw
heads if you have drilled holes through fiberglass to screw plywood onto the other side of it), let the epoxy on
the tape harden overnight, then sand the bumps off it the next day, either with hand 36-grit sandpaper or 50 or
80 grit on the orbital sander. Sweep and vacuum everything out, then put your fill coats on the tape inside the
tank with a 3” or 4” brush (remember, you already have fill coats on all your plywood surfaces that you put on
them when they were horizontal in the shop). You may need to put two fill coats on to completely coat any
vertical tape surfaces; horizontal tape surfaces usually only need one coat. Don’t be a maniac about this looking
good, it’s going to be inside a fish tank. The fish don’t care.

Tank Bottoms And Final Outside Seam Fiberglassing:

After you have finished filleting and taping, then fill-coating all the seams inside the tank, it’s time to turn
the tank over and fiberglass the bottom of the tank. Why do this? Well, the bottom of the tank is going down on
the ground. Even if you put wood preservative on the bottom and paint it, it will sooner or later get moisture in
the plywood, and the moisture will be the beginning of dry rot, which will eventually ruin the tank, possibly within
a year or two. If you completely encapsulate the bottom of the tank to about three inches up the sides with epoxy
and fiberglass, then the bottom of the tank will not be able to absorb any moisture from either the inside or the
outside of the plywood making up the tank bottom. You will paint the sides of the tank above the fiberglass on the
outside with wood preservative before painting with oil-base enamel, so they will also be proof against dry rot.
The only difficult part of this is turning the tank over so the bottom is horizontal and you can work on it.
Depending on the size of your tank and how much it weighs, you may be able to do this with a few friends, or you
may need a backhoe or a really big tree nearby and a chain hoist or wire come-alongs.

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WARNING! You need to have thought out turning over the tank long before you get it assembled. While you may
have been able to easily move the bottom, sides, and ends of the tank around in the shop while you were working
on them, you now have a completed tank that weighs five to six times as much as any one of these single pieces
that you could easily move before. BE REALLY CAREFUL!!! A tank that weighs a couple hundred pounds can hurt
someone if you’re careless while turning it over; a tank that weighs a thousand pounds can easily KILL someone!

If you don’t feel confident with this, hire a professional of some sort who has insurance and a good reputation (a
crane operator, a contractor with a backhoe), and have them do this with a trained crew. Although I’ve moved
large obejcts weighing up to six tons (boat hulls) with just a couple of hand-cranked wire come-alongs, I had
LOTS of experience moving small objects before I tried moving these large ones. We have a six-ton crane and are
trained and certified in its use, and that makes it easy for us to do even very large tanks this way.

You need to do this twice! You also need to turn the tank back over after fiberglassing the bottom is finished,
and you need to be able to transport the finished tank to where it will be installed, all without dropping the tank
on any hard objects such as rocks or pieces of rebar, which could make a dent through the fiberglass on the
bottom, which will turn into a leak, which will eventually rot your tank out and require repair or replacement of
part or all of the tank. BE CAREFUL NOT TO DING THE BOTTOM OF THE TANK WHEN MOVING IT!!!!. We
use PVC pipe rollers over 2x8 boards to roll tanks short distances, a trailer with a ramp we can roll the tank down,
but we never drop a tank on the ground or drag a tank across the ground! We also prepare the ground where the
tank will sit first with a 3-4” layer of sand covered with a layer of 6-mil black construction plastic plus a layer of
ground cloth so that weeds don’t grow out from under the tank and make a mess later.

6. Fitting Types and Installation

There are two types of fittings we use in these plywood/fiberglass/epoxy tanks; the easiest and cheapest one
is the piece of PVC pipe filleted-in to the side of the tank. If you put this type in you can easily glue on any type of
fitting you want on both sides after the tank is installed; and you can get all these fittings at any construction
supply store such as Lowes or Home Depot. The other type of fitting is a standard bulkhead fitting (called a
through-hull fitting in the boating world), that we purchase through a company called Aquatic EcoSystems in
Florida (their toll-free phone number is 877-347-4788, call and ask for a printed catalog first, as their online store
is difficult to use at best, even when you know what’s in it).

Both types of fittings are installed in the tank after it’s fiberglassed and topcoated inside. You can install these
fittings before or after painting the outside. We’ll describe the PVC pipe fitting first:

What is PVC pipe? Can I use that black or gray stuff? There are many different kinds of PVC pipe, but the
only one that is important is schedule 40 (white PVC pipe and fittings), because it’s the only one that’s food-
grade. We assume you’re going to put fish or hydroponic vegetables or abalone or some such in your plywood
tanks, right? Well, if you eat it later, the water it grows in needs to only travel and be held by food-grade
surfaces such as epoxy/fiberglass, and food grade plumbing such as schedule 40 PVC. There are many other
colors and types of PVC pipe: SDR 25 and 35, and gray electrical conduit. There is the black ABS pipe, which is
used for sewers and drains. None of them are food-grade; you shouldn’t use them even if you get them for free!

What size pipe to use? First, determine what size of pipe you’re going to use for which fittings in your tank. A
good general rule of thumb is to use a pipe that is the next size larger than whatever size fitting your water pump
has on it, for any pressure water lines. What does this mean? Well, let’s say you’re pumping water from your
sump tank or last aquaponics trough back up to your fish tank and you have a water pump with a ¾” fitting on it;
you would put an adaptor on that to get it up to 1” PVC pipe size right after the pump, and run that 1” line all the
way back to your fish tank. That 1” line from the pump to your fish tank is your pressure water line because it
has pressure in it produced by the water pump.

For return lines, or the gravity-flow pipes coming out of the fish tank that take your water to the aquaponics
troughs or to another lower fish tank, you need to use a pipe at least twice the size of the pressure water line.
A gravity-flow pipe is one where the water just falls into the pipe from the force of gravity, and has very little
pressure in it as a result. Because of this lower pressure, you need a larger pipe to permit the same amount of
water to flow. If you use the same size pipe for both pressure inflow and gravity outflow, you will simply pump
your tank full until it overflows onto the ground, because not as much water will go down a 1” gravity flow

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water line as will flow in a 1” pressure water line. So, in the example we just used where you have a 1” PVC
pressure water line coming into the fish tank, you need a 2” PVC gravity flow water line coming OUT of the
fish tank. Now we’ll show you how to install the fittings into the tank that these lines attach to.

PVC pipe filleted into the side of the tank Purchase or borrow holesaws that exactly fit (as close as possible
but slightly smaller, we’ll explain why in a moment) the sizes of pipe you’re going to use for your tank fittings. You
will need a big drill to power a holesaw any larger than 2” or so. A Milwaukee “Hole Hawg” is what we use for up
to 6” holesaws. BE CAREFUL WITH BIG DRILLS! They have so much horsepower and torque that they can
injure you badly if the holesaw binds and you don’t let off on the drill trigger within about 0.12 seconds! Locate
your holes carefully: measure twice, drill once as the saying goes.

You CAN put the “plug” from a mistake back into the same hole with microballoon putty and some fiberglass
and epoxy, but it won’t be hard and ready to work on for another day. So spend the time necessary to get it right.
Drill all the holes for all the different sizes of fittings first (slightly smaller than the pipe, or exactly the right size
for a tap-in fit). Cut pieces of PVC pipe to this formula: make the pipe 3 times longer than the “nominal size” of
the pipe. Example: for ¾” pipe, make the piece 2-1/4” long; for 2” pipe, make the piece 6” long. This is assuming
you’re going through a normal ¾-inch thick tank wall. If the wall is much thicker, make the pipe accordingly
longer, you can always saw the excess off later.

Filleting the PVC fittings into

the tank walls; the worker has
the “putty board” in his left
hand, and is applying epoxy
microballoon putty in fillets
around the fittings with a
tongue depressor. The putty
board is an old plastic clipboard
with the hardware removed, or
a piece of scrap plexiglass.

The PVC fittings go into

partitions or tank sides that are
already fiberglassed and fill-
coated; this is the final step.

Also notice that the entire tank

end has not been installed yet,
to make installing and finishing
these interior partitions much
easier. The tank end wil be
installed last, then its interior
corners filleted and fiberglass
taped with 4-inch tape.

We put the inflow fitting for our tilapia tanks about 3” down from the top of the tank. The water level inside the
tank is about 8” down from the top so the fish can’t easily jump out. The reason for having the water inflow above
the water surface in the tank like this is that we can easily see if there’s anything wrong with the water flow into
the tank. If it seems much less than normal, we notice it when we feed the fish, and that alerts us to the
possibility that some junk has gotten into the pump intake filter. A water inflow fitting installed under the water
surface of the tank won’t give you this important feedback.

You can also just lead the water inflow over the top of the tank edge and avoid the fitting entirely. Water outflow
fittings are installed high up on the sides of the tank, where, if there’s an earthquake that busts underground lines
or a “human stupidity event” involving a valve or something similar, you only lose water down to the level of the
outflow fitting and don’t end up draining your tank and killing your fish.

When you have all the fitting holes cut the correct size, sand the outside surface of all the pieces of pipe with
some 60-grit sandpaper until they’re well scratched-up. This gives them some “tooth” and allows the epoxy to

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bond to them really well. Take your pieces of pipe and tap them into the holes you’ve drilled (which fits them
perfectly and holds them firmly for the next operation). Wait! You mean your pipe is LOOSE in the hole? Go back
to “A”, buy another holesaw slightly smaller than, OR exactly the same size as the pipe and try it again.

Now, if the hole is slightly smaller, you may need a ¾” round file or rasp to enlarge it a little (careful, not too
large, check fit frequently while filing!). Ideally, your piece of pipe will need to be tapped into the hole with a
rubber mallet or short piece of 2X4 so that it is firmly held. This is important because you are going to put a
microballoon fillet around it on both sides next, and if it moves at all during this process, you are likely to end up
with a mess. Make sure it’s solidly held in the hole before mixing any epoxy, then mix and apply as noted in “3.
Filleting and Sanding”. Just apply the epoxy putty as cleanly as you can all around the fitting, then wipe the
excess off. What’s different here is that you are not “wiping” in a straight line, you have to go in a curve around
the PVC fitting. It’s a little more difficult than the straight fillets you’ve been doing, but the good news is that it
doesn’t neet to be glassed with the 4-inch tape the way you glassed all the other fillets between tank sides,
partitions, and bottom.

Standard Bulkhead Fitting This comes in three types of plastic: food-grade PVC (usually the most expensive);
food-grade polypropylene (middle-range in cost); and non-food-grade ABS (the cheapest kinds). It is the simplest
fitting in terms of labor involved, but is more expensive to buy, and is VERY EXPENSIVE in the larger sizes; 3” and
4” are $26 and $54 respectively for ABS plastic fittings, and you’re not done yet; you still need a male threaded
adaptor on each side to attach PVC fittings to such as a filter on the inside of the tank and your plumbing on the
outside. Installation is simple: just holesaw the right size hole (you also need to get the right size holesaw for
each bulkhead fitting, and they are NOT the same size as the holesaws for a piece of PVC pipe the same “nominal”
size). You can purchase these at Aquatic EcoSystems in Florida (their toll-free phone number is 877-347-4788) as
we mentioned earlier. You can also get them at boat or marine stores, but they’re likely to be a LOT more
expensive because they have the “boat” designation. We use PVC pipe filleted-in to the tank walls because it’s a
LOT less expensive, and they’re easy to install.

The materials you need to install a

complete bulkhead-type fitting: 3M
“5200” polyurethane calking (or use
“E6000” calk) the male threaded part of
the bulkhead fitting, the female
threaded nut of the bulkhead fitting,
two rubber washers and one fiber one
(comes with the bulkhead fitting), and
the threaded adaptors to adapt the PVC
pipe you will glue on the inside and
outside fittings.

1-1/2” pipe size bulkhead fitting is

shown here, but they are available all
the way from ½” pipe size up to 4” pipe
size. The larger ones get very
expensive, so consider the previous
method of filleting in pieces of PVC pipe
for fittings larger than 1-1/2 inches.

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A 1-1/2 inch bulkhead fitting

installed in a tank wall; you can
see the “5200” squeezing out all
around the rim; this means you
have a good waterproof
installation.

7. Finishing Your Tank

When you built your tank, you used “treated” lumber that was treated with a water-based Borate wood
preservative. But, you had to use untreated plywood so that the epoxy and fiberglass would stick to it on the
inside. This is because the wood treating compound is either a greasy solvent-based one that leave a slick surface
epoxy doesn’t stick to, or it’s a water-based one, and your plywood will be soaking wet inside, even though the
outside seems dry to the touch. Either of these will make the glass peel off your tank. What this means is that all
the exterior surfaces of untreated plywood now need to be preserved with wood preservative before painting.

So, after you’ve finished the tank, including fiberglassing the bottom, and installing all your pipe fittings into it,
you will paint all the bare wood surfaces with two coats of HiBor (brand name), or equivalent Borate-based water-
base wood preservative, letting it dry between coats. You can use a copper naphthenate solvent-based wood
preservative if you’re not concerned with getting your installation USDA Organically Certified, but we recommend
using the HiBor. Also, this copper naphthenate preservative bleeds green like crazy through the first couple coats
of paint; it’s a headache! Let the last coat dry well before painting it with the paint, which we will cover next.

Paint with three coats of a good, oil-based enamel paint. Latex paints are much more porous than the oil-based
ones, don’t last as long, and dirt really sticks to them; so they’re rather a waste of time here. The oil-based
enamel is worth the extra cost and trouble. Clean your brushes and rollers out with paint thinner or kerosene,
disposing of the dirty thinner responsibly. Wash hands and skin that got paint on it with Simple Orange or similar
mechanic’s hand cleaner, do not clean your skin off with paint thinner: you will poison yourself!

Make sure each coat of paint is reasonably dry before putting the next one on; we recommend a drying time of
at least 24 hours, and more like 48 if it’s damp or cool where you painted the tank. Even if the paint feels not-
sticky to the touch, push hard on it with a fingertip and see if the “skin” on top of the paint moves sideways. If it
does, it means the paint is not dry yet. Taking this care to make sure the paint really is dry is to avoid having a
coat of paint go on over ones which aren’t entirely dry yet; if you paint too soon, you will get three coats of paint,
with the top one dry, and the bottom one still oozing, and it will take forever to dry the bottom coats, because
you’ve sealed the bottom coats off with the top coat so the solvent can’t evaporate out of them.

Painting your tank a light color will keep it cool in the summertime. If it’s inside a greenhouse and is exposed
to the sun, paint it the whitest white you can find, otherwise it will heat up the inside of the greenhouse in the
summertime, when you don’t want it to.

Now is the time to chrome plate the bumpers, the little rings around the headlights, the door handles, and so
on. It’s much harder to do this later after you put fish in (just checking to see if you were paying attention! :)

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8. Airstone Installation

You will need to install airstones if this is a fish tank or abalone tank. If you’re growing something else exotic,
you may need aeration for it. Run PVC airstone lines under the upper tank reinforcing 2x, clipping them to it with
galvanized pipe straps and screws. Use Aquatic EcoSystem adaptors catalog number 62006 1/4" NPT X 1/4" barb
to attach AES number BTV40 black vinyl airstone tubing from adaptor to the airstone. A good general rule of
thumb for sizing your PVC airline is that if you have 8 0.5 cubic-feet-per-minute (cfm) stones or less, you can use
1” pipe; 24 stones or less, 1-1/2” pipe; 40 or less, 2” pipe, or use the AES airline sizing chart in their catalog.

You drill holes for these adaptors in the PVC or Driscopipe airline that are the correct size for a 1/4" NPT
(National Pipe Thread) tap, then tap threads into the holes with the tap and a ½” 12-point socket wrench. Do not
use thin wall schedule 40 pipe for airlines because there’s no “meat” to tap and thread the adaptor into. After the
62006 adaptor is installed into the PVC pipe, the airstone tubing just pushes onto the airstone and the adaptor.
We point the adaptors straight down when installing them, then the airstone tubing goes on and up around the
upper tank reinforcing 2X, over the rim, and down into the tank.

IMPORTANT: You need to install (2) diffuser bumpers (AES #DB10) or equivalent on each airstone. These are
heavy o-rings that roll onto the airstone, one on each end. These synthetic airstones are made of a gritty material
like sand that is glued together, and need these bumpers installed to hold them off of your tank sides or bottom.
Otherwise, the constant jiggling and bumping they do while putting out air will grind a hole through your
fiberglass, causing a leak and time and money wasted in a repair. Install the airstones with just enough tubing
so they hang down the sides of the tank about 2 inches off the bottom. Don't cut the tubing too long so they
actually sit on the bottom, because then they will grind a hole through the fiberglass on the bottom of the tank!

Airstones shown 2 inches off

the bottom of a plywood/
fiberglass/epoxy fish tank, with
DB10 O-ring bumpers installed
to keep them from grinding
holes in the fiberglass.

Aeration can be done in all kinds of ways using all kinds of equipment and methods. There are many ways to
create aeration: airlift pumps, water sprays, paddlewheels, rotors, blowers, compressors, etc. They all use more
electricity to create the same level of DO (dissolved oxygen) in the water than medium pore airstones connected
to regenerative blowers do. So you can experiment with them if you want and have the time and money. We
never had extra time or money, so we just use the airstones and regenerative blowers. They work wonderfully!

The reason we use the equipment and methods detailed in the following paragraphs is that they are the
MOST ENERGY-EFFICIENT for the depth of water we have. You will have your air generation devices on 24/7 for
years once you start up and they need to not only be dependable, but as energy-efficient as possible. Any
inefficiency will multiply many times over and show up in your bottom line at the end of each year.

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Aeration in these systems is created by a regenerative blower connected by Schedule 40 white PVC pipe
and food-grade vinyl tubing to medium pore airstones which are near the bottom of the tanks and troughs.

Here’s the reason why the airstones are at or near the bottom: It is easier to push air out of an airstone
that is in shallow water than out of one that is in deep water. But even though it is easier and makes lots of
bubbles, you don't get as much oxygen into the water as you do if the airstone is deeper. When the airstone is
deeper the bubbles come out of the airstone smaller (with more surface area), and travel further to the surface,
with the surrounding water absorbing oxygen from the bubble all the way to the top of the tank where it bursts at
the surface. Less fuss, but much more DO into the tank water.

Regenerative blowers installed on a

manifold that distributes air to all
the locations on our farm.

Blowers are Sweetwater brand,

from Aquatic Eco Systems (877-
347-4788, in Florida). DON’T BUY
cheap blowers! They are more
expensive in the long run because
they will use 2X or 3X as much
electricity, and they run 24/7!

We warned you (LOL :)

So we have our airstones 2" off the bottom of the tank, which gives us a high DO with minimum electrical
usage. The airstones tend to get clogged with aquaponics system crud over a period of time (usually six months
to a year in our 70-78 degree F water), costing you more electricity for a given amount of aeration, so they need
to be scrubbed or powerwashed then dunked in a Chlorox or hydrogen peroxide solution to clean them off, then
dried off in hot sun for a couple of days, every six to twelve months or so. To do this, you need to either take just
a few off at a time, plug the tubing they were attached to, and clean them; or you need a spare set of airstones
so you can rotate them in while the others are cleaned.

WARNING! DON’T put airstones back in your system without making absolutely sure they are free of
Chlorox. If they still have bleach down in their pores, the bleach will just transfer into the system water when you
hook them back up and may stress and/or kill your fish and plants.

9. Fill and Test Tank

It’s probably a good idea to fill your tank to the top and test it while it’s still in the shop. Did you do a good
job? Are all your glue joints actually glue joints? Did you read and follow the plans, or did you invent something
new? Are you willing to bet you did a good job? If you have a low confidence level in your first tank, you might
want to move it out onto the driveway before filling it with a couple thousand gallons/eight tons of water. If it
does go poof you haven’t dumped that eight tons of water in your shop or garage, but down your driveway into
the gutter.

We have had so many people try out “new” things and get “different” and more “exciting” results than we
got when we did it the old tried-and-true way that’s in this manual, that it’s difficult to catalog them all. What we
DO know is that if you follow the manual, it works. If you have purchased the manual instead of using the “free”
version without photos, you will also get the link to the CAD drawings for several different types and sizes of
tanks, along with materials lists. Use these as references for amount and size of wooden stiffeners and reinforcing
if you decide to “custom-design” your own tank.

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10. Moving Tanks: Ways and Considerations

A small finished tank is heavy. An 8-foot long, 4-foot wide by 4-foot high tank probably weighs around 400
pounds; You can wrestle it around with a friend, some PVC pipe rollers, and some 2X4’s on the ground. This is a
small, easy-to-move tank. You can make a ramp out of 2x8’s and slide it up into the back of a pickup truck. If you
have five or six strong friends, you can simply pick it up and put it in the back of the pickup truck, then follow the
reverse procedure when you are at the tank installation site.

A BIG finished tank is REALLY heavy! A 12-foot by 12-foot by 4-foot deep tank probably weighs around 1,200
pounds, and you can wrestle it around, carefully, with a single friend, a couple of 2,000-lb capacity wire
comealongs (that you can buy at a hardware store for around $49.95 each), some 1” PVC pipe in 16-foot lengths
for rollers, a minimum of four 2x8’s about 16 feet long, and “strong points” located in the direction you want the
tank to go that you can attach the comealongs to to pull the tank along on top of the PVC pipe rollers. You need a
couple of things to make this work: one, the ground needs to be level. If your ground slopes, the tank will simply
take off downhill on the PVC rollers, and you’d better get out of the way fast!

Moving a large 12-foot by 16-foot tank.

For a tank this size, you must have a
small crane or boom truck. For smaller
tanks, a backhoe will work just fine.

A much smaller and lighter (4-foot by 8-foot)

tank with “pump house” integrally glued-on
the outside of the tank. Just to the left of the
pump house, you can see a little bit of PVC
pipe: this is the intake that goes inside the
tank; there’s a valve there also so you can
“turn the tank off” for servicing the pump.
Unfortunately, if the filter screen on the
inside of the tank plugs up, you have to dive
it to remove it and clean it out.

The pump house “roof” removes with 4

screws for easy servicing of the pump.

This size of tank can easily be moved by four

husky people or a backhoe.

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A similar tank (with the same pump house,

but intake in a different location), in its
permanent location, plumbed up to the
aquaponics system behind it.

The roof is on an aquaponics tilapia

nursery tank which is behind this one. It’s
just a trick of the eye; you don’t need to
build a roof on every tank.

The second thing you need is “strong points” on the tank. You need to be able to latch onto the tank to pull
it, and putting a rope or chain around the entire thing creates problems of its own. It’s much easier to be able to
just shackle a comealong to a nice fitting bolted onto the tank where the tank is strong enough to take the strain.
Proper fittings and methods of attaching them are included in the “for sale” tank plans; if you decide to design
some yourself, make sure they’re STRONG and STRONGLY ATTACHED with BIG THROUGH-BOLTS, NOT
screws, lagbolts, or other wimpy fasteners.

If you’re going to lift your HEAVY tank, the “strong points” on the tank need to be strong enough to support
their share of the weight. You need four points on the tank to attach chains or lifting straps to; these four chains
or straps will come to a single point above the tank, and that is the point you attach your backhoe or crane hook
to. What do you mean “backhoe or crane?”. Well, unless you have strong points about ten to twelve feet off the
ground (minimum) at your shop, and strong points about ten to twelve feet off the ground at your tank
installation site that you can use to lift the tank with wire comealongs or chain falls, you’re going to need some
help. You have to be able to lift this thing up to get it onto a trailer or truck for transportation to your installation
site. The easiest way to do this, unless you’ve had a lot of experience lifting and moving things with wire
comealongs, is to hire someone with a backhoe or boom truck (small crane) to help you with it, or to move it for
you.

A “radical” idea: It might just be easier and cheaper to just build a huge heavy tank right where you plan to
use it than it is to move it. The easy way to accomplish this is by constructing a cheap “hoop house” using PVC
pipe, duct tape, and clear plastic, or build one from 2x4’s and plastic (kind of like a temporary greenhouse using
very cheap materials). Just remember, if your wood does get wet from your structure failing or wind blowing rain
sideways into the structure, you need to fix the structure, then dry the wood out before you can do any more
gluing or fiberglassing on the tank. Happy tanking!

11. Materials Lists For Some Standard-Sized Tanks

There are two types of aquaponics systems (actually, there’s a bewildering variety more than two, but we’ll
concentrate on the two mainstream ones that commercial aquaponics farms use). The first kind is more complex,
has multiple tanks, and costs more to construct and run; it works well, and is designed to grow as much fish as
possible. The second kind is simple, has a single fish tank, costs less to construct and run; it works just as well,
and is designed to grow just as many vegetables as the first kind on only one-fifth of the fish. That is four-fifths
fewer fish than the first kind.

I’m sure you think I just went cuckoo there: for who would want to raise fewer fish? Everybody loves fish:
they’re full of protein and so on, and eating them is good for your brain. A pound of fish takes much less feed to
raise than a pound of chicken, and far less than a pound of beef. It seems like raising as many fish as possible
would be an obvious choice.

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But there’s an important ingredient we haven’t mentioned yet: the person who would want to raise fewer fish is
someone who loses money on their fish because of their economic environment. If you are losing money
on your fish but making money on your vegetables, it’s understandable that you would want to use as few fish as
necessary to grow as many vegetables as possible. Without turning this into a 230-page aquaponics manual
(which we also wrote), the simple story is that there are two kinds of aquaponics systems, one that raises more
fish, and one that raises just as many vegetables on one-fifth the fish. The decision on which one to build and use
should be an entirely economic decision; that is, if in your economic environment you are certain you can make
money on one kind or another.

When you make this decision, you should do it based on business sense and experience, with solid numbers in
hand from an aquaponics farm that is profitable, not still in development, or still using investor’s money to
operate on. Don’t say we didn’t warn you! A lot of people get caught by the lure of the fish and go into
aquaculture or aquaponics based on that alone. But maybe you have a trust fund and will be OK :)

Two Kinds Of Aquaponics Systems: High Density (HD) And Low Density (LD)

High Density Systems (HD) These were our first systems, which were designed after the University of the
Virgin Islands (UVI) model systems. They have solids settling tanks, net tanks, and degas tanks; these tanks are
all necessary in order to get rid of the excess fish poop that 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of fish per square foot or raft area
will generate. This is the way aquaponics was taught to us by UVI: their system was developed by aquaculturists
trying to grow as many fish as possible while keeping the water quality high at the same time. Because of this
high density of fish, we now call them HD systems.

The design criteria of the UVI systems was based on growing as much fish as possible, while not being
overly concerned with the cost of raising those fish. It's understandable how this can occur in a university
environment where the administration pays the bills, and the program never has to stand on its own feet
financially.

What we discovered, after a year of operation in a commercial environment where we had to pay all our
own bills, is that the fish portion of the operation loses money. Our fish cost between $4.00-4.50 per pound to
raise, and we sell them for between $2.00 to $2.50 per pound wholesale. This realization came at about the same
time we developed our LD systems, whose original design goal was simply to make a lot of vegetables and not
require a large and expensive off-grid alternate energy system to power them.

It seemed like such an "of course", that nobody questioned it: of course you would want to grow as many
fish as possible. We didn't question it either until we lost $2 per pound on the 6,000 pounds of fish we raised (and
kept track of) that first year. You can bet we paid a lot of attention to this kind of thing after that!

Low Density Systems (LD) We developed our LD systems after receiving many requests for an economical,
viable, off-grid aquaponics system. The goal of this system was to only use one-fifth of the electricity and fish food
that our original UVI-style systems did, but have the same vegetable production. This was so it would be
economical to power from an alternate energy system, which are relatively expensive. Our first LD system was
our Family System, a 256 square foot backyard aquaponic system. It’s been running successfully nonstop now for
four years, with little maintenance and no headaches.

Our LD systems run on about one-fifth the fish the UVI systems use (around 0.3 pounds per square foot of
raft area), but have no clarifiers, net tanks, degas tanks, nor sump tanks. Needless to say, they are not only a lot
less expensive to operate, using only one-fifth the fish food and electricity to aerate the fish, but they also are
much less expensive to build, and are far more profitable in a commercial environment! These LD systems are
now organically certified (and certifiable) by Organic Certifiers of California.

Our LD systems contradict the more common philosophy many aquaponicists support of trying to grow as
many fish as possible. We think they are encouraged to do this because they are still operating on investment
capital rather than income, because they haven't analyzed their financial data or gone bankrupt yet, or because
someone else pays their bills for labor, electricity, fish food, and the cost to build and maintain their facilities out
of facility income.

THERE IS ONE GOOD REASON TO BUILD AND USE AN HD SYSTEM: Please don't think we are dissing these

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systems, we're not’ we’re just saying be very careful. There is one good reason to build and use an HD system,
and that's if a number of economic factors line up exactly right for you in your location:

If you get good prices for your fish, and have cheap electricity, and have very cheap fish food and labor, (and
have run the numbers on all this to make sure), then the most productive and profitable system is an HD system
just like our original UVI-type systems, which will grow more fish in that economical climate. They have more
tanks, more plumbing, and larger blowers, but they may pay for their increased cost very quickly with the
increased fish production (if you run your numbers carefully).

But if you didn’t run your numbers carefully, or simply didn’t run them at all because you were seduced by the
siren call of: “grow lots of fish”, then please don’t complain to us when you lose your shirt trying to grow lots of
fish, whether it’s in an aquaponic system or an aquaculture system. Here’s the bottom line:

If you add your costs for raising fish (fish food, electricity, and labor) and find that they are more than the
wholesale price you get for your fish, the most productive and profitable aquaponic system is an LD system
(because you are losing money on the fish!). These LD systems are now organically certified (and certifiable) by
Organic Certifiers of California.

If you add your costs for raising fish (fish food, electricity, and labor) and find that they are significantly less than
the wholesale price you get for your fish, the most productive and profitable aquaponic system is an HD system
(because you are making money on the fish!). HD systems are organically certified (and certifiable) by both
Organic Certifiers of California AND Oregon Tilth.

We supply designs with complete CAD drawings, materials and equipment lists, for both types of systems in
our “Commercial DIY Aquaponics Training”, both HD and LD, so that you can decide which is best for you
(hopefully after running your numbers!). These items are not included with this manual (because they’re way
beyond the scope of a $50 manual) but are available from our website: http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com/do-it-
myself-systems/which-system-for-you/.

Additional materials we’ve supplied with this manual:

1. SmallCS1.pdf This is a pdf file (that will be downloaded at the same time this manual is) of an
architectural “D-size” drawing sheet containing details for 3 separate tanks that are intended for an HD
system of 1,024 square feet of trough area. You can send this to any digital print shop (such as Office
Max, or Staples) as an attachment to an email to have it printed.

If you have read and understand the above, you will want to carefully choose what kind and size of tank
to build for your system or needs. You can run the exact same size system (1,024 square feet of trough
area) in Low-Density mode (LD) from a 4-foot by 8-foot tank just fine; in fact, there’s a plan for one on
the same sheet: it’s called the “Sump Tank” on the sheet.

Although it’s not shown on the drawing, you must use the same 2x6 and 2x8 bracing all around this 4-
foot by 8-foot sump tank that the larger tank on the page called the “Rearing Tank” shows. If you need a
bigger single tank than this 4 X 8 tank, build one that is 8 X 8, or 8 X 12, using all the other details on the
“Rearing Tank” drawing, but omitting the part of the rearing tank called the “clarifier”. Choose carefully;
you may want to look into some aquaponics system designs first also so you have good information to
make a decision with :)

2. Materials list for tanks: The materials list here is for all three of the tanks shown on the drawing sheet. If
you’re going to build a single tank instead of all three, you need to get out a sheet of scratch paper and a pencil,
then count the sheets of plywood, pieces of 2x4 (and how long they need to be), square feet of fiberglass cloth,
screws, and so on to arrive at an estimate of how much material your tank will need. Practice on the “Sump
Tank”, as it is a very simple tank and should be easy to takeoff a materials list for.

Also note that the PVC fittings noted on these tanks are for a very specific aquaponics system, and yours may
need to be different to fit your system’s requirements.

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Plywood/Fiberglass/Epoxy Tank Materials

29 3/4" ACX treated plywood, untreated

4 2x6x 10' treated construction grade lumber (exterior tank stiffeners)
4 2x6x 16' treated construction grade lumber
4 2x8x 10' treated construction grade lumber
4 2x8x 16' treated construction grade lumber
5 Lbs 2-1/2" x #8 galv drywall screws or equiv
120 yards of 6-oz fiberglass cloth 50" wide, or equivalent area of fiberglass cloth in a different width
40' 6-inch wide 18-oz triaxial fiberglass tape
18 (total) gallons of 2-part epoxy resin (three five-gallon cans of resin and three one-gallon cans of SLOW
hardener if you are using a 5:1 ratio resin system. You also need squeegees, brushes, mixing containers, acetone
and lacquer thinner, 7" or 9" disposable foam roller covers, a couple of roller pans, and a dry place to work and
store the fiberglass cloth.
2 1-lb size microballons (filler powder to mix w/ epoxy for fillets and putty)
1 5-gallon size HiBor water-based borate wood preservative
1 5-gallon good quality exterior oil-base enamel for painting tanks. You may want to get a gallon of a trim color
also to make your tanks look nice and crisp.

12. How To Waste Your Time On A Tank

We’ve covered how to do it: now we’ll cover the things you should not do, unless you want to waste your time
and money trying to build a tank.

Number One: don’t try and save money by using a cheaper wood glue on the tank, then fiberglassing it with
polyester resin and fiberglass cloth (or even worse, just painting polyester resin on the plywood!). We’ve seen
tanks built with “carpenter’s wood glue” (which is for gluing cabinets inside a house), and they fell apart quickly.
We were blamed, for we hadn’t thought to tell people to not do stupid stuff yet while building their tanks!

Number Two: not bothering with the two coats of wood preservative, and maybe even just throwing a single
coat of latex paint on your tank (instead of the 3 coats of oil-base enamel we recommend). It will start rotting
immediately if outdoors in the weather.

Number Three: Don’t bother glassing the bottom of the tank, or don’t bother being careful after you have
glassed it and are moving it, and get some big dings through the glass into the plywood. Your tank will get
condensation into the plywood on the bottom, and it is a perfect place for dry rot to occur.

Number Four: don’t put any 2X stiffeners on the outside of the tank before glassing the panels; they would just
cost extra anyway, and be more work. Your tank will bulge, and may get to the point of collapse if your glue joints
give way.

Number Five: up to you. If you can invent a new disaster that isn’t on this list, and get that information to us,
we’ll print it, and it will help someone else to avoid the same mistake and suffering. We know what we
recommend works well; if you want to experiment, please don’t blame us if the experiment doesn’t work. But by
all means, please tell us if it does, for that information will also benefit someone. We got where we are by
experimenting, we just want you to know that the process isn’t always painless.

Aloha, and thanks for listening,

Tim Mann, Susanne Friend, and the whole crew at the “Friendly” farm

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