Can Fiber Glass Resin Bond to Wood Fiber?

Yes, it will bond to wood quite well.

I assume you're going to use marine ply.

I'd recommend using some glass matting with the resin - it will add a lot to the structural strength, particularly along the joins.

Probably a good idea to apply a coat or two of resin on the outside (including the underside) - the environment will almost certainly be very humid, and all you can do to to protect the wood will be well repaid.

If its to be all wood, marine ply is the best as it resists being boiled without de-laminating for at least 24 hours if I remember correctly. I do believe its a resin that bonds the plys together in the first place.

A good design that will resist the pressure of the water is VERY important. It should not need any nasty chemicals to seal if made correctly, but fill it with water and let any surface chemicals leech out for some weeks before using it for fish.....underwater plants may enhance the process. Read up on the web before starting......

Don't use any kind of wood for the walls. Use plastic, metal or glass.

Seal it with aquarium sealer.

No wood!

If you use wood, the "resin" will bond, but the fish will die.

Might I suggest you use fibreglass bathtubs. It will save you some fabrication.

They're cheap second hand hand, and being fibreglass easy to add plumbing to for filtration etc..

Like Lyn says, don't have bare timber as your tank walls, the timber treatment will kill the fish...

Glass fibre resin also leaches chemicals in to the water, this will not improve the health of the fish.

"Fiber glass resin" is actually polyester resin, cured with methyl ethly ketone peroxide.

There is no fiber, or glass in the resin.

Glass fibre resin is just a common way of reffering to polyester resin.

It can be used with epoxy resin and various other resins.

In this case epoxy resin or glue would do a better job than polyester resin.

Common, perhaps. Incorrect, none the less.

Only in your understanding.

Yes, language does have a way of evolving, I guess.

Not all polyester is glass fibre resin, but all glass fibre resin is polyester. N'est ce pas?

Non. Ce n'est pas vrai.

Epoxy, vinylester and polyester are all common glass fibre (fiberglass in the US) resins.

Merci

Wrong.

Did you forget Epoxy resin for example?

And although I am no expert, I do believe there are some other "resins" around, but I am open to correction on that point.

Glass fibre is often the material that gets bonded by a resin, usually 2 part.......though nowadays there are other "materials" that can be impregnated with a resin (Carbon fibre is also one I believe).

Polyester resin is the cheaper of the two that I know about and is usually used for large things like car bodies or boat hulls.

If you look on Wiki here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-fiber-reinforced_polymer

You can read this as the first couple of sentences that your comment is about 100% wrong!! Here is a copy:-

Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer or carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP or CRP), is a very strong and light fiber-reinforced polymer which contains carbon fibers. The polymer is most often epoxy, but other polymers, such as polyester, vinyl ester or nylon, are sometimes used. The composite may contain other fibers such as Kevlar, aluminium, glass fibers as well as carbon fiber.

The rest is also very informative as well, do read on!!

I think the question, not statement, I made was okay. Every hit that comes up for glass fibre is from a country under the crown. I think it is basically lost in my translation. We don't call it glass fibre in the U.S., we call it fiberglass which covers all of the materials you mentioned (less carbon fiber, wonder why we don't call that fibre carbon?).

I worked at Westport Shipyard in high school, I know how fiberglass works, thank you very much. I cut enough of that stuff to cover Washington state (seems like, anyway).

Sorry, but your previous comment (the one I previously replied to) was still wrong and you made it "worse" by now demonstrating that you should have known better after hearing where you worked at one time!!!

Your comment was:-

Not all polyester is glass fibre resin, but all glass fibre resin is polyester. N'est ce pas?

Need I say more? I have underlined the offending words....totally wrong. Though the start of the sentence is still questionable.....depending exactly upon what you were trying to say of course....

(By the way, I speak French good enough to understand the French and nothing was lost in translation on my end, maybe you yourself didn't understand it? It means, "Is it not?)

By the way, this blog is not exclusively for US citizens (SURPRISE!!), its for Engineers of any race creed or colour, living somewhere on Planet Earth. So get used to different spellings, they are different not wrong!!!

Even in the US surely you know that Fiberglas(s) is a trade name... So by using that name, you are inadvertently advertising one company's product, but apparently you didn't know that....you are not alone!!! Good marketing!!

So it is still incorrectly but "popularly" known as Fiberglass........so you are just using the popular name....no problems there, except that you generalize the resins as only being of one type alll under that same name (as many lay people do!), but as we are not really so "lay" here, its usually a good move to use the correct terminology.....

You can get properly and correctly clued up here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiberglass

Then you will be as well informed as the rest of us about the glass side........

By the way, there are several resin types (I only know of two off hand, but there are more!) that can be combined with Glass Fibre (or carbon fibre), ONE of which is polyester, a good link is here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyester_resin

Another one is Epoxy here:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy_resin

If I can be of any further help, please ask, but some others here are actually in the industry, so to say, they will have better and fuller infos than I have posted......

Have a great day

Well done.

Try a channel where you understand the lingo better.....Sesame Street?

"Well we'd have to be talkin about one charming motherfreakin pig!"

Thanks but what is a "Pard", is it positive or negative?

Raising a volume of fish in a small space requires careful controls or the fish will die from their own excrement, and many more things are needed.

Aquaculture

Hemispheres give high water volume with least material. Polyester resin over plywood is rot prone. Explore various kinds of tanks already available. What kind of fish? What country/climate? What feed? Catfish? There are guides for raising food fish.

Polyester resin bonds poorly to a wood substrate unless styrene is added to decease viscosity and enhance saturation of the wood.

A stronger and cheaper, and, by all accounts less toxic to your stock would be to build a ferro-cement "aquarium"...what you are building is a small pond for raising food.

This is an easy two-person job, or even one, with thin-sheaf plywood or fiberboard to act as the assistant holding back the mortar on the opposite side of the person applying the mortar. Also, you can shape it so there are no corners etc. to trap fish crap and make it easier to clean. Here's a link to a simple project like yours.

I volunteer at a community fish hatchery. We had donated to us a "tank" made out of 3/4" plywood covered both sides with "fiberglass". The wood eventually rotted out and the whole thing crumbled. The rot probably occurred over 5 years. Wood just does not like being encapsulated in fiberglass. (I know, there are some canoes made this way. They look very beautiful, but I suspect they are out of the water 95% of the time.)

We also use large round tubs, just over 8ft diameter and about 42 inches deep. They are made of "fiberglass" and have lasted at least 20 years.

We also use poly tanks of similar size, about 1500 gal. They appear to last extremely well also and were not particularly expensive.

Actually, the success of modern canoes, and other boats like this depends upon the resin. Modern wooden boats built with epoxy resin are substantially more waterproof than a standard run of the mill "fiberglass" boat (which are made with polyester resins -- which we wooden boat builders think of as garbage).

Polyester should not be used with wood. The resin itself absorbs water, and it is a poor adhesive for wood. (That has not stopped manufacturers of "fiberglass" boats from using it as a wood adhesive, nor from using wood cores, which eventually become saturated and rot.) A properly built modern wooden boat made with the correct resin and fabrics does not have these problems.

The polyester resing will adhere to wood but first mix some clear resin and thin it with styrene and apply to the wood let cure then go ahead and apply the resin, I would definitley use some fiberglass mat or cloth and roll out any bubles. Lyn is correct in the resin leaching chemicals into water and may not be compatible with livestock. If I was doing this I would use an epoxy resin costs more but remains slightly flexable and this prevents most cracking and water migration into the wood. Also less toxic since it does not gas off as much as poly resin. Leave one side of wood clear of resin to allow moisture to evaporate and keep off the ground. Not sure of size of tank you are building but there are lots of used container vessles available both in plastic and metal. Good luck..

youngken,

Maybe OT but -

I don't know what your budget is but one option could be one of these or something similar:

Obviously, if you choose this route, you can probably find a much better price locally by shopping around.

Source

Good Luck!

There are many things to concider when looking at the design of a fish tank. Some points to think about.

When the fish...excriment builds up on the bottom of the tank you need to get rid of it somehow with the fish still in the tank or else they will die from the toxins.

What type of fish are you keeping? Some need deeper tanks than others, some need wider tanks than others. Some fish species can get stressed if they are in the wrong environment and will die.

You need to filter your water or have a continuously replenishing supply. If you have a large tank how can you ensure your design will supply fresh water to all parts of the tank. If you get this wrong you can get build up of crap in certain areas or stratifying water levels.

Do you need access to the bottom of the tank for drainage? Can you build the tank into the ground and have underground pipes? Do you put your tank up of a stand? If so do you need a tank with legs?

There are many more variables wrt fish keeping on an industrial scale. If you are thinking about it then put in a lot of planning before buying equipment. As well as your tank you may need, pumps, filters, UV sterilisers, heating, cooling, lighting, protein skimmers, syphons, oxygen generation, degassers, an unbelievable amount of piping and everything else which goes with running industrial plant.

I was part of a 4 man team which built a cod hatchery 9 years ago and it is a complicated business.

If I use a family type inflatable swimming pool to grow fish, do you think OK?

Anyone has tried like this? Is it durable?

Thanks

I don't know anything about these pools but I would say there is one problem I can see straight away. You don't want a tank which has any crevaces or corners. Crud will build up in these and poison the fish.

We had GRP tanks about 4 cubic meters in capacity for the juvenile fish. Cod juveniles are tiny, about 1 mm length when hatched so we used the small tanks with a low flow rate. As they grow then you put them in bigger tanks as the biomass/water ratio is government regulated. At the size we put them out to sea we used 20 cubic meter GRP tanks.

I think you'd stuggle with one tank as a minimum you'd want two so you can clean one and prepare it while the other was holding the fish. We had 56 tanks and on that scale you need tanks which are easy to clean but even if you have only 2 I can guarentee that you'll curse yourself if you pick the wrong one.

This is the place you want to do your research.

I've spent more time reading about pond construction than I have about solar heating!

The place is busier than CR4..

What a waste.

That link you supplied seems like, by far, the best place for the OP to seek the answers to his question. GA

Do not use polyester resin, because it is a poor wood adhesive and is absorbs water. Old boat hulls blister underwater because polyester is not a good underwater resin, even when no wood is present.

A waterproof (or fuel proof, etc) tank can be made with epoxy resins on wood. These resins are less likely to kill the fish quickly (than polyester), if you let them cure for about 2 weeks. But fish are extremely sensitive to chemicals, and may be sensitive to some that that can leach out of even epoxy resin (which when cured is nearly inert). You may have read about bisphenols and baby bottles. Note this from wikipedia on bisphenols:

• Epoxy resins containing bisphenol A are used as coatings on the inside of almost all food and beverage cans,^[18] however, due to BPA health concerns, in Japan epoxy coating was mostly replaced by PET film.^[19]

You could use food grade epoxy, and be fairly safe, but it would be very expensive.

If the fish are not in the tank long, and if they are robust, then boatbuilding epoxies would work, provided you used at least three coats, so that none of the chemicals in the wood would leach in. Once epoxy is cured, it is remarkably inert, (and a human could probably consume a fair amount of ground up, fully cured epoxy without ill effects). Personally, I'd be comfortable drinking out of one of my wooden boats (although I'd look a little strange doing so).

In typical modern wooden boat building, fiberglass cloth is used in epoxy resin. Without the cloth, some plywood (especially fir) will check (form little cracks). Okume plywood covered with fiberglass cloth (6 oz for your application) would make a very durable tank. Many epoxies cure with an amine blush (and amines can kill fish), so you would want to make sure that you wash the tank before use. (It comes off with ordinary detergent and water.)

Read online about stitch-and-glue boat building.

Of course, you could line a wooden box with a polyethylene tarp (.006" thick or so) and you'd be good to go, I'd think (after washing the poly.)

Do you have a supply of fresh running water (from a stream or well etc.) or are you going to filter & recycle, with just top-ups of fresh?

Or then again _{(thinking outside the pool )}, is it pumped seawater?

OK, I have seen some pretty good answers on here but not many actually answer the OP's original question.

We are now all trying to give him an alternative solution to making a vessel to accomodate some 'cheap' fish. Which is fine so I will give my 2 penneth worth.

I presume that you are talking of rearing some fish to sell on as they get bigger? Could these be Koy Carp, comets, shibunkins etc by any chance?

Will you site this tank/pond indoors or outdoors?

I still think that you can still make your marine ply box, of course reinforced with the steel brackets. Then if you line it with a sheet of butyl liner (same as for outdoor ponds dug out in the ground) you will have a water tight vessel for not a lot of cost, after all you were prepared to make this structure originally. You will just need to cost in the liner.

As others have mentioned you will need good filtration and possibly UV sterilisation to keep all the toxins from fish excrement etc out of the water.

I decide to use timber to build the external "formwork".

I also built one more timber box as a internal "formwork" with a little bit smaller than that of external one.

Then I will pour cement with reinforced steel mesh.

I will jack out the internal one, left the harden cement together with external permanent formwork.

I need a number of this tanks, internal formwork can be used for a few time. Perhaps it is the best way.

Make sure you line the wood with a release agent, waxed paper etc.

The inner box must be made in sections you can unscrew and pull away from the wall. In addition, cement has a density of 3 or more times that of water. This means that the internal and external forms must be braced or they will bow in and out, using more cement and making things harder for you.

Forming links

Framing links

In addition, ferro-concrete has no or very small added aggregates. Normal cement has a risk of aggregate bridging on narrow sections = leakage pathway.

You've probably thought of this (or will), but if I were doing that, I'd place some kind of lining plates on the four or five (counting the bottom) sides of that internal form--not fastened to, just placed against. Ideally with fairly smooth surfaces.

Then you can (first) jack out the internal form without fighting the "friction" (sticktion) of the concrete against the form, and afterwards remove the liner pieces to be used again for the next tank.

Sounds like my suggestion for the fero-cement ponds. Your walls will be very shallow, compared to concrete, and the more mesh, the merrier. The mesh and the concrete are a one plus one equals 3 situation. They compliment each other.

May I suggest using a plastic sheet liner inside the plywood box.

Sorry I'm late for the party,... but, that's how Avenger Class Minesweepers 1-14 are held together.

Some more info