Jenny:
Hey guys it's Jenny. Welcome back once again to Solid Gold. Today I have a super exciting video for you guys because as you can maybe see behind me I'm here at custom aquariums and I'm going to get to show you guys kind of a behind-the-scenes peek at what goes on here. It's super awesome right now we are in-- What part is this?
Adam:
The glass shop.
Jenny:
The glass shop. This is where they cut the glass, where they drill the tanks where they put all the tanks together. You can see tons of tanks just sitting here curing right now. Here's a gigantic one here, they drew me a cute little welcome. Look at that it's Clyde how cute is that?
Adam:
We've got several thicknesses, quarter inch, 3/8, half inch, 3/4, 5/8 and they're all available in regular or ultra clear. Depending on the order we will pull their particular type of glass.
Jenny:
This would be the very first step?
Adam:
Yes, you pick the customer's skew of glass, the particular glass you're using four their tank.
Jenny:
Are there multiple pieces of glass on the thing that he just split out?
Adam:
Yes, that's a whole crate of glass. If that's full, which would be anywhere from eight to like ten or twelve sheets of glass depending on the thickness, that's something around 4,000 pounds that crate would be. You need kind of elaborate rigging equipment to be able to manipulate those giant heavy sheets.
Jenny:
All right so this is the the table where the glass is going to fall?
Adam:
Yes, this is where the glass is gonna drop.
Jenny:
Oh my gosh.
Worker:
Most people hide behind the door.
Jenny:
Really? Is it that scary?
Adam:
Joey made us use a human shield. Just kidding.
Ted:
Are you going to do the flop?
Jenny:
I think I should. Am I going to break it?
Mark:
No.
Adam:
Let's hope not.
Mark:
One in a hundred right?
Jenny:
One in a hundred, oh geez. After they take out that huge, what is it called a crate of glass?
Adam:
Yes, a crate of glass.
Jenny:
The huge crate of glass, they then have to take just one sheet off of that crate and they do that by dropping it. They have this table. It's described to me like an air hockey table where there's like little holes in it throughout and there's air coming up so when the glass falls on it it doesn't break, and they're going to have me do it.
Ted:
Actually during the drop that air is on it. It's just really the displacement of the air as the glass is falling.
Jenny:
During the drop the air isn't even on?
Ted:
If you had it on it would shoot right off the bottom like a hockey puck.
Mark:
We're dropping.
Jenny:
Dropping. Good job, that's insane. I didn't ruin it. Okay, I'm getting down, I'm scared. That's normal around here.
Adam:
Yes that's what we do.
Jenny:
I'm so glad I didn't break it. I would have felt so bad. It's like an adrenaline rush. Okay, they're going to turn the air on so they can slide the glass now. It's kind of loud. Look at this machine, how do you even know what is happening on the screen here?
Worker:
It's just X,Y axis and you program it in and you can-
Jenny:
This is like the whole sheet of glass and it's showing you how you could cut it?
Worker:
Yes.
Jenny:
Okay.
Worker:
That's the last piece of glass that we cut
Jenny:
That's the last piece. Look at all those pieces you got off of that.
Worker:
I'm just going to press this button, we'll all stand back because it'll move pretty fast and scan it. There's a little laser on there and it'll read the edge of the glass and zoom down and read the other edge and then it'll come and read one of these edges and then this edge and then zoom down read the other edge you know and it will pop up the dimensions of that piece of glass.
Jenny:
That's it?
Worker:
That's it. Now it's red, the glass is 144.06 long, and 84.29 high. This is going to be like a front of a tank. They're going to be replacements, we had some scratches on some. These are going to be replacement fronts for two different tanks.
Jenny:
That machine just came and did all of these score lines and then they just have to break it along the score lines.
Worker:
The trick is if this machine is many, many times more accurate than a human hand could ever do. Which means you're are going to get a straighter piece of glass and the most important thing is to get a square piece glass. Because by the time you glue all these different members together, all the tolerances add up and you're going to have a pretty crooked piece of glass if you're going to start with square pieces of glass.
Worker:
Even though we just scored the glass, if you don't break within a certain time frame it'll actually heal itself and it won't break.
Jenny:
Will you be able to still see the score lines?
Worker:
You'll still be able to see the score lines.
Jenny:
But it won't be breakable anymore on the lines? Well what are you waiting for?
Worker:
Micro fractures right off of the cutting table. If you don't polish those out, they make your aquarium really vulnerable.
Jenny:
Okay.
Worker:
A lot of companies aren't doing that. They might lightly sand them or they have a machine that will sand them that is not as good as polishing. There's a big difference between sanding and polishing. Company trying to get a lot out the door and take short cuts and make money, it's so tempting and easy to not do a good job on the pieces you don't see. We guarantee them forever and we believe in quality. We take the time and we take the effort. Every piece of every tank that goes out gets polished. The difference here between hand drilling is the drill bit comes from both sides of the glass, which prevents the glass from blowing over. If anybody's hand drilled a tank before it's a real struggle to get to the other side of the glass and not to have chips.
Jenny:
There it is. Once all the glass pieces are cut, they've been polished, holes have been drilled if they need any holes, the next step is they wash the glass.
Worker:
It's like a car wash. Instead of washing them here, there's two sets of brushes on each side of the glass. Here, here, and here.
Worker:
Taped it and dotted it.
Jenny:
What are those?
Jenny:
They're like little spacers.
Jenny:
Okay.
Worker:
Silicone spacers.
Worker:
Yes, so there's no glass on glass, because glass on glass, it can expand with water and a little bit and it can-- That can create a fracture if it's glass on glass.
Jenny:
After all that the next process would be setting the tanks. They set all of them by hand, you can see some of these here have already been done. They've already been siliconed as well and they're curing. They're having to lift and place each piece independently by hand. First they put the bottom piece down, they made sure it was fully supported with foam and now they're placing all the side pieces. They're already taped it looks like too.
Worker:
Corners are cosmetic. We're very careful to tape them so you get really good straight lines. The bottom beads we favor more big, thick structural beads. The bottom will be framed covered with the aluminum frayed on the outside. The inside will have an aggregate like gravel or sand. There's not a lot of point in taking away silicone to make it look good when you're not going to see it anyways. You're better off over applying it so it's stronger.
Jenny:
Now they're checking by hand to make sure that all the corners are flush and lined up properly.
Worker:
In between the glass, enough to keep the pieces from moving. Once that structural shot is set, they'll go back into a cosmetic shot. It will be basically all of the rest of the glass. After that they basically peel the tape and detail it.
Jenny:
They're setting the bottom frame right now so they actually have to lift up the entire tank and place it on top of the frame here on the ground. They do that with big huge suction cup handles and this is actually one of my tanks you guys that's going in my fish room. Pretty cool, so don't break it.
Worker:
This sticks really well to aluminum, so the fact that aluminum's rigid in the first place is a big advantage but the bond between the aluminum in the glass is a lot better than plastic. Plastic basically is purely cosmetic, it really doesn't add any strength. Another hidden detail with the frame design is there's actually channels in there that the silicone can get in, and it grips better and it creates mechanical bond.
Jenny:
There it goes. The bracing is all aluminum on these, it's not at one molded plastic piece. The cool thing is if I wanted to get like a big piece of driftwood or something in here or a background, I can just unscrew this and this comes off and then I can put it back on when I'm done aquascaping.
Adam:
A typical tank that has a plastic frame, the weakest part of the tank is the plastic frame. Almost every time we get a call with an emergency somebody needing a tank quickly because their centerpiece broke. Our centerpiece is the strongest part because there's not only an aluminum frame where there's a metal bracket holding pieces together.
Jenny:
That's all there is here to see out at the glass shop. We're going to go back to the main office and check out some birds. I think there's some fish some other aquariums that are already set up that we can check out. Let's go. Now we're in kind of a livestock holding area for serenity. What was serenity again, Adam?
Adam:
That's our maintenance service business. We will service aquariums and bird aviaries all over the Midwest.
Jenny:
Okay, for places like nursing homes?
Adam:
Mostly nursing homes some doctors' offices, dentists, things like that.
Jenny:
What kind of finches are these? Zebra finches?
Adam:
There's Zebra finches, Owl finches all kinds of different finches. Most of the birds in this room will be placed somewhere within the next several months on a permanent basis.
Jenny:
They're so cute. Here we are back in the lobby at Custom Aquariums. They've got some really huge, awesome tanks that we're going to look at, check out the filter system as well. What's this first one here?
Adam:
This is what we call our amphibious tank. The upper part would be doors and the bottom part holds water. Karma the chameleon.
Jenny:
He is awesome. Where are you going to go?
Speaker:
You got nothing to grab onto, bud.
Jenny:
He's so cool.
Adam:
There's frogs in here, there's turtle.
Jenny:
Then you got an assortment of fish.
Adam:
That's our we call it the seamless sump filter. They are one-piece molded high-density polyethylene tubs. There's no welds, no seams, no leaks. Your one-piece molded construction makes them very reliable, very durable. You can literally go up and kick one of them and nothing's going to happen it's not going to break. There's glass lids on the top. They're very do it yourself friendly. You can hook lots of different plumbing configurations and not need to guess or measure. You simply line them up and hook them together in a multitude of options.
Adam:
The first one is a filter sock tub. There's a sock in there that will get the particles before it goes to the rest of the system and you can change that real easily. We've got a single, a double, and a quad sock tubs [crosstalk] to three socks. We have a massive custom sock that we use for this it's a lot bigger than most. This next tub is what we call the baffle tub. The left side has baskets stacked full of bio media. Then it is on some mold and that allows the water to go through the bottom and up and over the baffle.
This is the only one-piece molded baffle system that there is. We have a patent on this. Then it goes into the other side and then the pumps return them back into the system. You'll see over here we have a full reef tank just thriving and it's all using the seamless sump system. A little bit different configuration. We have a larger four sock tub. We have a clear-- Everybody says, "Yes but I want to see my plant tank" we can put our glass tanks in line with the rest of the system and you could if you wanted plants in there or whatever you could see it. The overflow, the same overflow we use in our fresh and salt systems, we have that same thing just drilled at the water line in our amphibious system.
Jenny:
Now we're out here in the shop which has assembly areas. This is where they have-- Do you have carpenters here that are building the stand?
Adam:
We have full-time craftsmen that are building the aquarium stands and canopies. We have shipping and assembly people building bird cages, reptile cages physically shipping the items.
Jenny:
Basically everything that's not the glass side of things happens in here.
Worker:
This would be our lifetime stand.
Jenny:
Okay, lifetime stand.
Worker:
Very modular. It can be broken down if needed to fit through doors or small places. Move it up on the second level if need be very easily. Removable doors, a lot of space underneath.
Adam:
We do have several systems though. We have the wood system for people who want the wood look. We also have the modular steel system that is in development that's just about ready to launch.
Jenny:
Can you explain what these things are on top of these crates and inside these crates there are aquariums and stands being shipped out?
Adam:
Aquariums and stands as you can see over here. These are to make sure nobody stacks something on top of your aquarium.
Jenny:
During shipping, for forklift or something.
Adam:
You can see how beefy we do the crating here. They're all custom built for this.
Jenny:
Your crates are all custom built?
Adam:
Yes. We would much rather overdo the crate than worry about an item getting damaged on the way to the customer.
Jenny:
Well you guys I just realized while editing this video that I completely forgot to film an outro while I was there. I can't believe I did that. When all was said and done, I had spent a solid six hours at Custom Aquariums getting the full behind-the-scenes rundown for you guys. Also hashing out some details on the aquarium and terrarium racks they're making for my new fish room. Every tiny detail, the dimensions, and other specifications of the tanks they're making for me is 100% customizable. As you can imagine there's been a ton of minute details and special requests I've made.
Seriously, everyone at Custom Aquariums has been so great at helping problem solve to help me get the tanks as perfectly suited to the animals I'll be keeping in them as possible which is awesome. I want to say thank you so much to everyone from Custom Aquariums who took the time out of their busy work days to show me around for this video and for making me feel so welcome. Thanks for watching guys. My first set of new tanks will be arriving actually this month. Stay tuned for more updates about that. I'll be doing tons of videos once the tanks arrive of me setting them up and all of that. Stay tuned for that and until next time stay gold.
Adam:
There it goes.
Jenny:
It's the sprinkler. Of course, we can't forget Brian. Brian takes all the **** around here.
Speaker:
He spit the other one right out.
