The whole purpose why I originally bought the welder was to fabricate a steal frame for my aquarium.  Once long time ago I had a 108gallon aquarium made using 1/2 inch glass.  You need 4 strong males to carry it when its empty.  The tank was plumbed on one side for a salt water setup, however I’ve only every run it as a freshwater tank.

When I first bought the tank, I made a wood frame as the tank only sat about a foot off of the floor.  Because of accessibility and back problems ( and also a new house with different room configurations ) I want to have the tank sit higher.  This means a steal frame.  When full I estimate the tank to be near a half ton.

So some considerations when designing this enclosure :

• side plumbed tank
• florescent lamps ( hood can be lower profile )
• filtration and lighting systems needs to fit in enclosure
• hinged locking hood for easy maintenance
• dimensions are 72″ long x 20 1/2″ high x 19″ deep

I had done some napkin drawings in the past, but figured this one will be a bit more complicated. Looking for CAD / drawing software for the Mac is a bit daunting especially if you have no formal experience on the topic. After some googling I landed on SketchUP by the folks at google oddly enough.

Now SketchUP might be absolutely useless for anything, I simply am not in a position to endorse anything. However what it has going for it is compelling enough for me to give it some time. Firstly its free, and this fits my budget well. Secondly its relatively well documented online, with tutorial videos and the lot. Lastly its not going to disappear one night as a result of bankruptcy or some corporate merger, etc.

So now I need to spend some time sketching out my aquarium enclosure while learning SketchUP and hopefully export some nice fancy images to append to this page.

To be continued …