I would think you could line a plywood tank with acrylic fairly easily.  It would cost much less also since you could use much thinner material.

Plywood tank.

Doesn't work as well for saltwater. Keodog/Kevin built a nice tank and the aquamarine colored 2-part epoxy paint looks good, but it is corroding at the air-water interface. The best I can figure is that salt creep gets into the microscopic pores of the paint and acts like ice on a rock. Over time with repeated wetting and drying the salt crystals expand and crack open the paint.

I would check with Keodog about another specific design difficulty that is creating a problem for his plywood tank, before I jumped into it.

LeRoy and Sally Jo Headlee ( www.garf.org ) have been great friends to the WMAS, especially in it's early days. Several of us have been to their facility many times in the past. Unfortunately, they no longer accept visitors. They are two of the great pioneers in the hobby.

Ok, I have converted my chicken scratches into a word perfect and a pdf.  How do I post them on the forum? 

Let me know, and in the meantime I will email these out.

EDIT: Emails have gone out to mrpslc@mstar.net, adamblundell@hotmail.com, and jfinch@xmission.com.  Anyone else, let me know.

EDIT: I found a picture of a similarly constructed 500+ gallon tank (96" x 36" x 36").  It was done using at least the same design philosophy on the tank (although I can't vouch for the specifics of how it was done).  The designer of this tank put it directly into the wall rather than on a stand.  So there are some differences, but I know people want a picture and I can't give them one, so this at least gives you the idea.  Again, not my work but according to the source it was the same concept.

As a side note, how in the world does he get into his sump, or anything else with the tank in the wall like this?

Thanks for the posts on Utah rock and sand.  I will read them over the weekend.  I may have questions, but I can always post them here.

I am putting together my scribbles on tank plans into something coherent.  I would be happy to post it here if I can figure out how to do that (I think I need pictures to communicate a couple of things, but I will see what I can work up).  If I could post a word perfect file, it would work fine, so if that is possible let me know.

And dukester48, unfortunately I can't post pictures of my freshwater I built (sigh).  I built it too big to get out the door (door frames are only 36"-40" wide) and so I had to leave it when I left Arizona.  Now I am just running an 80 gallon freshwater and a few smaller freshwater tanks.

EDIT:  On the brighter side, it does give me an excuse to build a new tank...

You can't post the plans here?

Send 'em to me too.  jfinch@xmission.com