40B Vertical Conversion Build Journal

[deranged chipmunk]

Interesting. Curious to see how this works for you. I have this spare 40b turtle tank laying around you see......


Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world ~ Nelson Mandela

[DigitalPunk]

Bill,

If it works out like I hope and looks decent I will do up a separate post that just focuses on what I did to convert this tank to a vertical. I will include all the products and places I purchased them. That is one thing that has bothered me is I will see some one who converts a tank to vertical and shows a few pics but have yet to find one that is super detailed unless they are using a conversion kit (which doesn't exist outside of the smaller 10 - 20G tanks.

My Biggest concern right now is the actual door. It is 24" tall x 16 7/8" wide 1/4 glass. It has some weight to it. I am bit worried the epoxy and hinge won't hold, but everything I have read tells me it will. I won't believe it till I get it all secured and see for myself lol

If this door fails I will either do a split door down the middle or I will switch to a smaller thickness glass to reduce the weight.

[Strider18]

Man another one? How many do you have now? Haha, will be watching.

[DigitalPunk]

LoL This will be the 5th tank in the house with frogs in them. I still have an empty 18x18x24 exo terra that will be whispering sweet nothings in my ear. I am considering setting up a couple of my 10 gallons as vertical grow out tanks for froglets if and when we get them.

[DigitalPunk]

Conversion is complete! To soon to tell if it will be a success, but I stood it up where it will go for the night (a little sooner than I would have liked), but I have company coming to tour the frog room and look at the tanks so I want the conversion up so they can see how it looks. Here are some pictures. I will be finalizing the how to video for the conversion tomorrow or Sunday. I will also post a how to thread on the conversion (maybe it will become an article lol).

The only think not working good is the stupid knob I bought for the door. It is hollow on the inside so the epoxy only has this tiny little lip around the bottom of the knob. May need to replace it with s different type. Anyways here are some pics

Glass door epoxied to the hinge and hardware epoxy complete


Screen frame completed and painted (this is a test fit after the painting was done.



Screen installed and fit back into place (not siliconed yet, waiting for door epoxy to cure so I can test opening and closing it to make sure it doesn't rub the frame.)



And here it is standing in place. The screen silicon is curing still so I taped it down to make sure it didn't move. False Bottom was finalized and tightened up. I put it in just to see if it would fit back in with the glass at the bottom.



This weekend will start the Spray Foam process.

I also ordered the frogs for this tank. They will be here next week and will go into an 18x18x24 exo terra that is setup as a very basic QT tank. I got 4 of them

[Strider18]

Very nice Look forward to seeing progress on this tank!