Finally managed to find an aquarium. It's...well, huge.
I've spent a few months browsing along the internet for a cracked aquarium in my area, between a 30-55 gallon with no good results. Craigslist was my main source and because we're big on the reptiles here on the Emerald Coast (apparently), finding a 'cheap' damaged tank is hard. I'm strapped for cash and I want to save as much money as possible. However, I may have jumped the gun a bit and made this more expensive in the long run. Ah, well. I found what I was looking for over the weekend, only it's a 125 gallon 6.5 ft long tank. It has a nasty crack along the back and I offered the seller 50$ as it's all I had to work with and its way bigger than I really wanted. He accepted, we picked it up.
What I really want to do with this tank is set it up for PDFs. However, my original drive in all this was to set up a nice natural setup for 2 of my snakes. Therefore, I'm playing with a few ideas.
A.) Split the tank into two separate units with a glass divider sealed off with silicon. ...or... B.) Leave it whole and make one giant Viv for the heck of it.
That being said, I also want to have easy access to the inside as well. I'm short, and bending over aquariums from step stools is hard on my back and this is something I want around in my home for several years to come. So, I'd like to take advantage of that crack and remove the whole plate of glass and have it cut. I've seen conversion kits for small vertical setups, but that's always by flipping the tank on its side. On this, I want to make the front of the tank the access point. (alright, technically, the crack is on the BACK of the tank, but its going to become the front).
Anyway, I've found one article online about converting a 40 gallon breeder horizontally but the conversion had to be done Do It Yourself style because of the size and angle. I've gleamed info to help give me an idea of what I need to do to create my own set of sliding doors, but I'm also hunting for any more advice that might help along the way, as well as opinions for the overall Viv as far as cage division (or not).
And here is a pic of the tank as it sits now:
As you can see from the image, it's one heck of a crack, but I think I can work with it. I want to have it cut just below the crack so that I can recycle the bottom piece and silicon it back in for water. I'd then need 2 glass doors cut to size. However, I'm a bit nervous that the glass doors would be too heavy for easy sliding because of the sizes they'd have to be. Not sure how that's going to work out so any advice is appreciated.
And, I don't intend on buying frogs of any kind for quite some time. The tank would be built and set up and left alone for observation as I do even more hours upon hours of research. My eyeballs wanna fall out as it is...
Thanks for your time.