[spazz]

there is a couple of ways to skin that cat. the one way that comes to mind is to use a steel frame work made from angle ironthat sorunds the entire outside of the tank. if you used rino lining to cover the steel and then glued in the pannels with dow corning 795 silicone it would seal the tank completly. dow corning 795 will stick to acrylic and to glass with out loosing its bond like regular silicone. the big problem is you haveto let the silicone sit for 2 months to completly dry. its a very slow process and is not a good way to mass produce tanks. that is why no one uses dow corning 795 to put tanks together. threr is also a urethane glue that can be used that will bond to acrylic and glass at the same time. the frame work would be unsightly in some ways but in others it would be awesome becasue it would leave the top open. if you used steel round rods for cross bracing it would be alot les intrusive than an acrylic top woluld be. im planing on building a tank that is 5 ft x 3 ft x 24" tall and it will have a steel rimmed top on it. the rest of the tank will be acrylic that is glued together the old fasion way. this will reduce the problems with acrylic tops that get in the way of equiptment placment.

you would need to make sure that all the steel is covered with the rino lining to seal it completly from the salt water. the seams in the tank would be sealed with the dow corning 795.

this would make the tank alot more shock proof to tremmors becasue all the seals would be pressure seals. the higher the pressure the harder the seal woud be. the only down fall is that frame would be covering the corners and would be lass apealing to view. this design would work well for an inwall tank that is not viewed from more than 1 side. or if you viewed it on 3 sides you would want to cover the steel with wood trim.
the steel would make the seams rigid and the DC795 would make the seal.