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Behind-the-Scenes at an Aquarium Manufacturer

By Solid Gold Aquatics on

Jenny:
It's happening not sure. Hey guys, I'm here with Ted Judy and we are at the Custom Aquariums warehouse.

Ted:
Welcome to Custom Aquariums.

Jenny:
It's so exciting. They flew me all the way here from Florida. This is in Wisconsin, so it's like across the entire country. Okay, no big deal but it's super exciting.

I already had the full tour of the whole place and I filmed a video of it. I'll be posting that on my channel in the next one or two weeks here, but in the meantime since I'm here with Ted, and we can check everything out, I wanted to do a quick live, just walk through of this area so you guys can see a little sneak peek before the full video.

Ted:
This is the glass shop. It's a little quieter in here now. Earlier today when she was here we were in here filming, we were in full production mode. We have a lot of tanks to build, lots on the floor, but everything is quiet in here now. We actually turn the lights back on, so we have the whole place to ourselves. We're going to show you around and show you some of the machinery. I'll be able to explain what does but I'm not the guy who use it so we won't be able to turn anything on for you. We can show some of the stuff that's on the floor and answer some questions.

Jenny:
All right. Behind us here are-- What do they call these? Crates of glass.

Ted:
Yes, this is how the glass arrives to us when we buy from glass manufacturers. Each of those wood pallets that you see is full of very large like 14 feet by eight foot pieces of glass. You can actually see one right over here behind you that's on the table. Here we go. It's probably easier to look at this way. If I come over here, you come and see this side.

This is a piece of half inch solid plate glass and this crate is what it is stored in vertically, and this table over here, this is one of the float tables. Then what happens is the glass is going to be flopped down onto the float table.

Jenny:
They drop the glass. They drop it. Somebody goes way up there on a ladder and just drops it down and, guess what guys, I got to do it.

Ted:
Let me see if we can turn this one on.

Jenny:
I think he's trying to turn on the table. It's like an air hockey table.

Ted:
No, it's not coming on. Normally the air on the table would lift the glass up and you actually would be able to slide this glass around it easy. She'll show you that in the video a little later.

Jenny:
When I do the full video for my channel, you guys will see them cutting the glass. It's really cool. Super impressive.

Ted:
Then that machine is a CUC cutter. This is a computer screen and all we have to do is dial in the sizes and pieces of glass that we need, the dimensions and that machine will measure the glass on the table and then wil simply cut all the edges we need, and then it'll help us break it.

Jenny:
Pretty insane. These are huge pieces of glass we're talking about. Look at this aquarium. Ted, stand next to this. This isn't not even close to the biggest one.

Ted:
This isn't even the big one.

Jenny:
Then there's a bigger one over here. So exciting.

Ted:
It doesn't have the dimensions. This is a 96x30x24.

Jenny:
It's huge. Then do they still have those panels of glass over here?

Ted:
No, they've moved it around the truck because you have to take those to the temper.

Jenny:
They have some bigger panels of glass somewhere else. I'll show you guys.

Ted:
Hey, show them this. This is the edges of the glass after it's been beveled and polished. We bevel and polish all the edges of the glass. Every edge that goes into the aquarium is cleaned up so that is perfectly smooth, has a nice beveled edge to it. If you show them this one here. This is a piece of glass that has not been beveled and polished yet so it is very rough and can actually cut you if you're not careful.

Jenny:
It could hurt pretty bad.

Ted:
Then this machine right here in front of us, this is the polisher. Basically, when this is running all day long it's the loudest machine in here and you run the glass through it one edge at a time. You have to rotate and bring it all the way back over to the other side of the machine and put it back through again. This piece that's on here, it's basically on a conveyor belt that just pushes it through the beveler. This one looks like it's been through once and every piece of glass goes through twice.

One of the most time consuming parts of building an aquarium is the amount of time it takes to go through the edges. Every single one of these six foot long-- Actually this is probably eight foot long. This long edge probably takes five to 10 minutes per edge to go through. If you can imagine, you have almost two hours of edging on a big aquarium just to polish the edges of the glass. It's one of the most bottleneck points or time consuming points in the construction of a lot of tanks.

Jenny:
Someone asked is this for my big tank in the middle of my fish room. It's for all the tanks that I'm getting from my new fish room. Custom Aquariums saw what I was doing with my fish room rebuild and Ted reached out to me and said, "Hey, we make aquariums, do you want us to make your aquariums for you?" Which is awesome.

Ted:
This is one of her's.

Jenny:
Here is one of mine over here. Let's show you, guys. They're doing a full wall of aquarium on racking systems and this is one of my aquariums that's actually going in my fish room. I got to help put the frame on the top.

Ted:
This is it right there. Jennie Lynx.

Jenny:
Jennie Lynx, Solid Gold. There's four of them here that are in progress, and the next part will just be working on the rack that they're going to sit inside of.

Ted:
Right. After the glass is polished and goes up that machine, it goes to the washroom. This is currently the biggest aquarium that we have sitting in the room right now.

Jenny:
You could swim in that thing, like seriously.

Ted:
A little swim here.

Jenny:
It's so awesome.

Ted:
They're going to keep the Loch Ness Monster in this.

Jenny:
The Loch Ness Monster is real. He determined.

Ted:
Then it goes into the washer.

Jenny:
This is the washer. After the glass has been handled so much, they have to wash it off and then there's also this whole thing is full of lights. It lights up the glass from behind and you can actually see scratches or smudges really well that for some reason didn't come through, come off in the washer which would be hard to believe because that's a pretty intense washer.

Ted:
You were looking for earlier. This is the panels of the glass that you're asking a few minutes ago, Jenny, about the largest aquarium that we've ever built is in the process of being built. The panels are on the side of this truck because they're going to a tempering company, where tempered glass is stronger and doesn't break as easily. For this really, really large tank we're going to temper all the glass. We can temper the glass after we drill all the filtration holes and everything in it. Then we'll get it back and we'll build the aquarium.

This aquarium I think that it was said it was 12 feet long, five feet wide and four feet tall.

Jenny:
Six feet tall I think. Six feet wide.

Ted:
It's six feet wide and four feet tall. Four feet is the biggest one we'll make so far. It's really big, and it's going to some place in Florida.

Jenny:
That's about how big my big tank is going to be.

Ted:
Yes, it will be.

Jenny:
From the middle of the room, in my fish room.

Ted:
The room is just completely full of aquariums. Every aquarium you see out here on the floor is curing. It's in the process of having the silicone cure so that it can be finished out before it can be shipped out. Right now we're shipping somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 or 15 aquariums a week. That's about how much our pace is but right now there are, I counted earlier today, there are 27 aquariums on the floor today.

A year ago, this would have been eight, 10 aquariums on the floor. Thank you to everybody that has made Custom Aquariums such a successful company over the past year. We're really proud of the work that we do, and we're also very grateful that people put their confidence in us in building the aquariums.

Jenny:
There's no reason they shouldn't because I saw the whole process today and the attention to detail is really cool to see. So much attention to detail, every little thing is thought about and checked, and double checked, and triple checked before it gets sent to the customer.

Ted:
This is our hole saw. I can't show you but what's different about our hole saw is that it drills the hole from two sides, both bottom and top at the same time to get nice even holes. Let's see if I can find a piece of glass that's got a nice hole in it.

Jenny:
There should be plenty.

Ted:
There you go. It's a nice, even round hole.

Jenny:
That would be for the filtration like the overflow, the return.

Ted:
Right, this is for the H2Overflow and this one is for the return. This one's got two H2Overflows and one return coming back from it. We build and drill holes whatever sizes that you need, it doesn't have to use our filtration. Of course, we think our filtration is pretty good but we often will get phone calls or orders for people that are replacing an aquarium that has a problem or order aquarium. We have to make them to the exact same hole specifications to match the filter system that’s already there or the stand that’s already there. But we can do that. That’s why we're Custom Aquariums.

Jenny:
Yes, they can literally do anything. Like with my order, they probably are regretting working with me because I’m just like, “Can it also have this, and I also need this. I also need to put a heat mat under the tank because it’s for a leopard gecko,” and they’re not really set up to do that, but they can be. Yes, it’s just like so many details.

Ted:
We can show them the frames. You’re going to show them frames in details, but this is the-- your all aluminum frame has got these removable crosspieces so that if Jenny wanted to put in a big, huge-- here’s a really good example. She’s talked about doing full backgrounds or solid backgrounds.

Jenny:
Like a fake rock background, 3D.

Ted:
You can get some that are flexible, and flexible ones can bend, but some of them aren’t flexible. If you had one that wasn’t flexible, while the tank is not full of water, you can pull out this crosspiece, install your background, put the crosspiece back, and it’s just as good to go.

Jenny:
Yes.

Ted:
Anybody have any questions?

Jenny:
Do you have any questions for Ted and I while we’re here? Questions people. [laughs] They’re going back too fast now; I should have be careful what I wish for. Do you build these tanks specifically for aquatics? Can you select if you have tanks for reptiles? Can it be change for that? Yes.

Ted:
Actually we do. We actually have two companies here; one is Custom Aquariums, the other one is Custom Cages. If you go to customcages.com, you’ll see our full line of reptile caging. We can also build the aquariums for reptiles if you want, but the reptile cages have nice sliding glass doors on the front and things like that. We can put different types of tops on the front of these aquariums. If you’d like a screen top, or a sliding glass top, or a sliding screen top, we can do that on top of the aquariums for reptiles. A lot of people buy them for reptiles.

Jenny:
Yes, there are so many options as I’m learning. What’s the first tank you’ll be setting up? I’ll be setting up one of these, one of these first. These will be stacked one on top of the other, so it will be a rack of two. I’ll be setting both of those up together at the same time with goldfish.

Ted:
Yes. She’ll be getting four at once. your first two units, which will have two aquariums per unit, so she’ll have a few tanks to work with.

Jenny:
When is your big tank getting delivered?

Ted:
Delivered?

Jenny:
Yes. That’ll be the last one.

Ted:
Right now it’s a concept.

Jenny:
Yes, we still haven’t ironed out all the details. Guys, there’s just been so many details to iron out. It’s not something I was expecting at all, but it’s been really cool, and exciting, and fun, because there are so many different options. When they say Custom Aquariums, they truly mean custom because you can customize every tiny, little, last detail. That’s why they need so many details from me about what I want, what I’m using it for, et cetera, what kind of equipment I’m putting in the tanks, so, yes. With the 2,000-gallon, there’s going to be an insane amount of details to go over.

Ted:
Like what we explained to Jenny today was, we have a new piece of stand technology that we’re in the process of perfecting. It’s actually, the prototypes have worked really well, we can scale them up to be any size; and that’s one of the things that we are going to make sure we have perfected because we’d like to be able to use that stand. It’s a stronger stand, it’s easier to install stand, and it’s easier to ship stand, and it doesn’t come all in one piece, which means it’s going to be able to fit inside her door pretty easily.

Jenny:
Yes. I made sure to get the largest door that I could afford to. It’s eight-foot door. Someone asked, how many dedicated goldfish tanks will I have? There’s going to be, let’s see, 520 gallons for goldfish. I’m also probably going to get two stacked blue tubs for goldfish, which will each be about 100-120 gallons. That’s a lot of goldfish space I would say.

All right, any other questions? Let’s do a couple more questions and then we’re going to wrap up, guys. What kind of warranty is there? Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Ted:
Our aquariums have a lifetime warranty so long as you can put them in one of our stands. That’s important because nobody stands are created equal. I can show you some pretty interesting pictures of things that people have put aquariums on, which aren’t meant to hold that kind of weight. If you buy the aquarium and the stand from us, we will guarantee it for life.

Jenny:
Yes. It’s pretty impressive. Let’s see. One more question. [pause] How much do you charge for say a 55-gallon tank? I feel like that’s going to be a complicated question to answer.

Ted:
It will be a complicated question to answer. Now, one thing that I’ll tell you is that our technology that we use to build these aquariums and engineering it goes in the aquariums, makes for an extremely strong aquarium. We very rarely build aquariums that as small as a 55-gallon tank. It’s really funny earlier today, we were talking about Jenny’s tanks, they’re all 120 gallons, and one of our engineers said, “Yes, but on tanks this small.” I was like, “Small? All right. Welcome to Custom Aquariums, where a 120-gallon tank is a small tank.”

A 55-gallon tank from us would cost a few hundred dollars, but it’s built quite a bit differently, and it’s quite a bit safer, and quite a bit stronger than what you’re going to pick up off the shelf.

Jenny:
Yes, it’s built like a literal tank.

Ted:
Yes, it’s like a tank. It just depends what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a very inexpensive aquarium then this is, probably, isn’t the place to come. If you’re looking for a really big aquarium, and a really strong, safe, secure, and dependable aquarium, you’ll find if you compare prices on equivalent tanks, equivalent size, that we’re pretty affordable.

Our prices of aquariums over $2,000 include shipping to you. Anywhere in the continent of the United States, if the order includes a tank and it’s $2,000, we ship it to your kerb. We won’t help you get it inside, you need some friends to do that, but we’ll get it to your house.

Jenny:
Someone asked, what’s going in the 2,000-gallon aquarium? I’m leaning pretty heavily towards--

Ted:
Alligators. [laughs]

Jenny:
Not alligators. [laughs] Probably koi. I’ve always loved koi. The only problem was I didn’t have enough space for them, so now that I’ll have a huge tank, it only makes sense for me to have koi in them, plus they’re kind of kind of like goldfish in a lot of ways. It’s kind of similar to goldfish, so I feel like it fits with my brand, so to speak.

I think that’s going to be it for the livestream today. Thank you guys for joining us. I hope you guys enjoyed this live video. I will be posting it as a replay, so if you missed some of it you can watch it again, too. I hope everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving if you celebrate Thanksgiving. Until next time stay Gold.

Ted:
Bye-bye. Thank you.

About Solid Gold Aquatics

Jennie’s fish house is outfitted with Custom Aquariums rack systems that include standard glass aquariums for her fish collection, amphibious tanks set up a bioactive vivariums, and Custom Cages Hybrid H2 reptile enclosures.

"I'm Jennifer Lynx and Solid Gold is about goldfish and all the other pets in my life - aquatic or not! Fancy goldfish have long been the main subject of my channel, but as an animal lover I have many other pets that I make videos about too. Here you'll find goldfish, discus, plecos, other aquarium fish, axolotls, poison dart frogs, leopard geckos, rabbits, cats, and more. Subscribe to see new videos about them every week!"

Jennie's mission is about promoting the goldfish hobby and inspiring better goldfish-keeping practices.

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