A Trip to Master Aquarium Builders "Glasscages" - THIS WAS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED!

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] not what i expected to see when i go out to see a uh aquarium manufacturer an emu [Music] hello friends ben ochart here and today we're going to take a road trip to glass cages in dixon tennessee and you can see here we're in the forests of dixon tennessee and uh glass cages made a a stand and a rimless tank for me that you're gonna see featured in some upcoming videos and uh in speaking with joe one of the co-owners we decided i should go down and uh take a tour of the place and uh i was very very surprised at what i saw and what i ran into and there really is no tank project that they can't undertake it starts by filling out an online form and getting an estimate of what you'd like to have done and then of course working out the details with the staff over at glass cages they can pretty much do any kind of tank a rim tank a rimless tank like the one they made for me special sizes special dimensions as you'll see as we take a tour through their tank building facility they can even do sumps and working glass and acrylic let's go ahead and start the tour and see what they've got going on out here all right so i'm here with joe over at glass cages joe is a part owner of glass cages and uh he's gonna give you a tour of the place we're gonna go inside and look around and uh i think we've got something in store for us that's a lot more than just uh tanks right joe oh yeah we're gonna show you the property got a lot of things to see all right let's go yep let's go glass cages was actually started by tom who on the orders of his doctor moved to tennessee after several heart attacks some health issues so he decided to make a major lifestyle change and headed for tennessee and ended up building a few pet enclosures for his wife and the end result was he ended up starting a company glass cages which has produced hundreds and hundreds of aquariums today tom is pretty much retired and spends his time taking care of the of the fish that live in the 11 ponds that he built on the property this one uh is full of juvenile and some adult koi several of them have koi beautiful koi other ponds actually have bass and and bluegill and fish that people can come and actually fish on the property and because it's private property you don't need a license you can just go ahead and set up and uh and fish away of course you can't fish the koi [Laughter] but tom now is uh is retired and has turned things over to the new owners which are joe and todd which were originally the providers of glass they would sell the glass to glass cages they became acquainted with tom and his wife and uh they liked what they saw and they went ahead and invested in both the company and the property and everything else that we have going on here which you're gonna see which actually goes way beyond simply tank building let's hear a little bit from tom about what it is that uh brought this about so tom i heard the story you you sold everything in chicago and came down south yeah i got yeah i had a heart attack and that support my job yeah that's something that uh makes people uh rethink their life doesn't it yeah we we tried a few things and the fish tank took off nice and then several other things as you can see nice um so now you um you've stepped back a little bit let todd and joe kind of run things it's theirs completely there you go so it's a pretty industrial looking property here in dick dixon county joe dixon county tennessee and this is joe he's gonna give me a joe help me with my stand and my tank and he's gonna give me a tour on this vehicle here through the property they not only make tanks and stands but they also have fishing so i can come here and fish all right let's go ahead and go let's go the upper industrial section uh quickly turned into some dense and beautiful forest on the way down we rode past some of the equipment that tom had acquired and used to uh actually build some of the ponds that are on the property are those your solar panels yeah nice so we've got rural and very modern at the same time this is a good mixture hey the drive out here is beautiful it is what we got here chicken coops we have about 130 chickens 130 chickens all right fishing area there's a total of 11 ponds on the property and these ponds were dug out using that equipment by tom they drain into each other and uh it's quite quite a setup i might just be coming back here to do a little fishing myself but we had to get in past the fence which holds the cattle in cows busted out of their pen so now they're on this side of the property so we're uh now what do you do what do you do with this cattle oh they they mow the grass okay there's four of them and uh just a good trailers also we have a whole bunch of trailers people come pick them up and go wow this is a good size this is beautiful probably 88 so all these ponds are stocked with catfish bluegill largemouth bass and stripe bass last week tom caught a 20-pound cat on the pond upload on the other way over there so tom built all the pawns they were not here they were not here originally really resourceful so tom's a builder he built this bridge by hand see the one up there that's what that car is gonna drive over okay nice so this one's a more shallow pond stock stocked with the same kind of fish this one goes all the way up over that way but on that whole ridge right there is about 40 to 50 feet deep and then it has a slow incline i'm catching in the summertime that is a hot bed for bass 40 to 50 feet deep on the far side right there yeah and then it comes up real quick wow there's a ledge or a cliff and that's all dammed this used to go down that goes to the interstates on the other side of the other hill i stand right on that little first area there and just cast out wow it's awesome use lures or bait lures all the time wow well definitely not what i expected for uh aquarium manufacturing i told you i said you got to come man this is wild stuff certainly not what i expected but still a beautiful setting and what a great place what a great place to have a a place of business on 80 acres with 11 ponds a variety of uh of livestock chickens donkeys and emu and certainly not the the conventional manufacturing setup but i can only imagine this is like one of those only in tennessee type of businesses quite quite amazing actually when you think about it so tom has all this property and one day he builds a cage for his wife turns out okay and he starts this business now when did you when did you get with glass cages joe two years ago two years ago two years ago todd and i were supplying glass to glass cages as a as a supplier and we got to know tom and beth over a couple years and they were at the place of retiring and we had a good relationship so it worked out it was real fun so are you moving into or already in an ownership position oh yeah we bought the company you bought it from him okay so he just stays on the property and yep i live in florida part of the deal and todd has moved up here nice fun stuff so todd and you pretty much are the guys that run the show now nice so you went from a glass supplier to owner of the company and with that came the property we have a portion of the property i get it so so he held on to some of that there's everything's co-mingled i get it yeah nice this is amazing out here and out here is where they collect moths in this little section here because it's a major migration path how's that for a fish video let's go see some more oh yeah now here's a bridge that tom built the founder of glass cages built this by hand and we're going to risk riding over it so you put the gate up to keep the cows in a car three cows and a donkey four cows and three donkeys four cows and three donkeys yes sir and how many chickens donkeys are great they protect everything so this was a tractor barn that got converted into a massive fish room well rooms rooms multiple rooms it's a lot it's upstairs i was shocked to see hundreds of aquariums on several floors containing what must have been a thousand or more fish but this is really a topic for a video at a different time but you can imagine and what shocked me is how these aquariums had so much algae that had built up which tom is working on and but yet the fish were all strong and healthy i even picked one up to bring home with me a fish i've been looking for for quite a while i was quite surprised what was going on here and i'll definitely be taking a trip back to document this hey buddy what's hopping well that's a pretty frog i don't know how big he gets it's uh it's 2 31. it's two it's 2 31. i i got here at one o'clock yeah one o'clock one o'clock and and so far i've i bought a fish right here i bought a fish i've seen a thousand fish named tom and we named it tom i've seen an emu and uh we drove by 200 chickens or something a donkey 11 ponds yeah and i have a tower okay and i haven't even seen a single tank manufacturing area yet no so we're going to go do that now we went to the fish house too we saw the fish house that's right thousand fish and uh 300 tanks all right let's go see where they make aquariums [Laughter] let's start a tour of where all the magic happens here absolutely and uh how much how many tons of glass you said we have here 140 tons 140 tons of glass there's no glass storage here right here oh right okay no no glass shortage there's no glass there's no glass no glass shortage but we have to we can build them okay and you've got glass in a variety of thicknesses yep tints tense we're going to go through this is neat if you come back over this way look at the edge this is regular glass and then if you go this one this is low iron you can if you stand back here you can clearly see the difference between the two oh yeah you know i could tell that difference on my tank the front panel so this is low iron and this is regular yeah look how dark that is that's a big difference now how does low iron compare to acrylic and it's a see-through well when an acrylic tank is new it's the clearest acrylic is the clearest because then it starts to get scratched right oh then the scratches are doing all the scratching now this machine here can lift this as a vacuum hoist to move each sheet of glass to the cutting table cutting table comes up vertical slides the glass on it table goes back down it's kind of an air hockey effect with uh when you turn on the air so you can move the glass score and cut all this glass over here has been cut for a tank all this is for all this in this section so everything here is for tanks have been ordered you're saying yeah very nice now you're saying this uses air to float so you could have a thousand pound piece of glass on here and you could just push it around because it's floating on air amazing that's exactly right crazy that is crazy crazy all right let's go and this is all committed this is all glass that is committed to tanks that you're building right here this is magic now we're in the magic section this is the polisher oh okay now when you say polisher it polishes like the edge the entire surface of the edges so the edges are not hand polished per se they're they're done by a machine here see how it's polished okay so this is not something you can cut yourself on now because it's been all cleaned up i like it this is an awesome polisher we have a second one we're putting up so we'll be running dual two polishers so anybody really can get a tank right now there's no shortage of tanks now how many people will be working this floor at any given time what about 18 18 employees that's a nice polish stage one blue iron really nice very good another one of your uh massive hoists this is what we call this a mule we have two of them so this is on wheels so we can pick up a huge sheet of glass and roll it through the whole shop that's how we have two two mules and four donkeys well instead of taking four four guys to pick up an eight-hour eight-hour pack we can use this one first it's pretty cool one person could lift up here okay this is cool the top bottom drill press when we're drilling holes in glass oh nice so we drill it starts drilling the bottom and then the top will come down right on top so this gives you a very clean look yeah very clean you don't see it splining on the outside yeah so you can order your tanks pre-drilled yep very nice you guys don't do anything in acrylic it's all glass i'll show you acrylic oh you do acrylic too oh i didn't know that so here's a couple of tanks in the process you see the holes are drilled these are all euro brakes so these are drill tanks they're euro braced and they're just you're just waiting for the the glues adhesive to dry yep the silicone this is regular glass and this is low iron it's low iron you can see the difference between the two nice you also do small tanks it's not just all big monster tanks but look at this look at this beast right here this is uh gotta be what 300 gallons there you go we have one over here about 500 500 gallons over here that one's almost ready to deliver yeah another turtle tank you do an all-in-one turtle tank with a ramp and a platform and this this customer wanted a divider in the tank so it's a removable divider because the two turtles don't always get along oh that's interesting so therefore we don't have to have a separate tank we can do one tank and they can uh isolate and you customized it for the uh the european bracing you have at the bottom absolutely and then it holds the turtle tank with like these incredible ramps this is like a royal cruise line type now this one over here i notice has an overflow box made of glass interesting i like that now this is no doubt going to be a salt water application it is can we make an acrylic cover for this and i'll show you when we get into the qa department so the fish don't go flopping down into the sump so you have you put a weir on it you have a large overflow box and then i notice you have two large at least two maybe three inch holes drilled that's for a closed loop system on this tank very nice this will be euro bracing this tank was assembled on thursday beautiful now you say this tank is special why is this tank special joe oh there you go the tinted smoked glass around the top oh look at that around the top so we have a smoked glass euro brace this is sort of like a it's a show tank a bit of a ferrari of an aquarium we use low iron for the cross braces low iron for the cross braces does that make it stronger just for visibility okay the other thing that we've done is this is a trimless tank yeah this tank it has trim yeah this is trimless so we put the concealed water line on the inside oh i like that because i know using a sump sometimes you're not really always to the top that's right so that's really nice to conceal the water line because if you didn't do that then you would see the water line and this tank is a trim tank in contrast this one has metal back trim this doesn't have low iron cross brace you can see the difference you know i like about that low iron crossbar is that you're going to have less less uh blockage of your light source people they pay a fortune for their lights then they block them with whatever they have at the top of their tank it's really nice now what is that right there that's about 180 maybe more oh yeah you've got low iron all the way around or lower cross braces tinted smoked tinted glass it's tinted it's not vinyl wrap yeah so the the glass is actually when it's made it's tinted some of that you showed me on the rack yep all right what have we got here oh this is a sample tank a sample it has a little bit of everything on it so we start with the trim we have a black trim yeah the white trim that we also have the bracing this is cool we're highlighting bronze glass bronze glass it's tinted bronze then we have tinted smoke here tinted green so this to give a person a sample of everything that's possible that's right this is a regular cross brace regular glass and this is low iron cross brace you can see the difference real quick yeah it's a lot like greener this is pretty much yeah that's very see-through and then this piece of glass right here you can see it's frosted yeah so we have a white frosted kind of cool match with the the white trim and then in the inside you can all of our tanks have an interior bottom brace yeah and we're highlighting both clear and black silicone on this tank so we have um here we have the so the way the white silicone looks and then the side the black we have the black silicon this panel is low iron and this panel is regular glass so low iron like the front of my tank that you made for me and if we go around you can see the darker green of the regular glass and you can disguise the sand line with a black bottom yep it's an inch and a half up and you can disguise the water line right here with a black stripe yeah if the if the customer wants it so if you did the white or the black trim that does the water line as well but that's pretty cool stuff very cool very cool all in one that'd be the tank that you take with you like if you're going to a show or something i imagine yeah it's an awkward 25 pounds of low ground but yeah yeah unless you make a little pocket-sized one it's cool so the section we're walking into is the is the quality control section we do inspection we verify scenes we verify uh seam work they get clean we verify dimensions hole location um everything about what was specified for that particular tank so this is prior to shipping so this tank the tanks that are here are on the last stage of manufacturing that's right they're pre pre-delivery and look at the size of this beast right here this is what uh 10 feet maybe 12. this is a 10 foot 10 foot tank 30 30 30 30. and this tank is got an overflow on that side and you've got some uh this is a this he wants a river action in this one oh interesting so this is all inland so inlets here they'll be blasting water across which then gets taken down into this overflow cover's there you can see the weird yeah and the sump that's underneath it is going the opposite direction it's going to be a weird big circle nice it's pretty cool almost like a closed loop you're saying yeah so this tank is very close to delivery uh this will be probably shipped back and uh we do other things over here in this area come on come over here i'll get around the back this tank has black vinyl um that we wrap it we can wrap uh any customers image they want or a company logo or whatever we can print nice but the primary color that everybody picks is black and then a royal blue so we could put a uh a benno cichlid absolutely on the back of it absolutely that's funny and we also have these overflows with the synergy reef overflow that's a kit instead of having the big overflow box yeah you can have one of these okay those hang on there like i can hang on back yep where it's drilled right here yeah i've i've i've got uh one from esop right now now why are these in a tent uh they're ready for getting vinyl on them less dust okay so they're getting wrapped for delivery so those are even closer to being delivered yeah this is the uh island of tanks tank island this one is for sale these are tanks that were orders were cancelled or this one right here we need an extra one inventory this one's ready to go you can go either fresh or salt it's low iron all around black or white trim how many gallons is that it's a uh 72 24 28 tall it's a beautiful painting so we have to custom make a stand for it this has little iron cross braces too nice that's nice what would you guys sell that's that for you think to a family member so these tanks are customer pickup yes that are waiting against this wall and these are some that are probably going to be delivered all this over here is ready to be palletized all right when you say palo size put on a pallet and put a truck and off it goes wow so we make some neat stands this is a red oak modern push to open they have slow stop doors very pretty it is a really nice red oak it's a red oak they want to do it with a dark uh walnut really pretty this is this is a popular color it's royal blue we do a lot of oil blue for an overflow overflow as well as wrapping nice yeah i see those in in stores a lot they use the royal blue background here's another sand this is this is the one this is that fine furniture one that's painted black i think a friend of mine in nolansville got him john he got a black stand from you okay he liked it a lot also you do steel yeah this stand is for that tank in there they have the white trim this is a 10 foot stand wow you need something like this to hold that much water it's safe that way yeah for sure and the way you've treated it looks like it's never going to corrode it's powder coated and has leveling feet on the bottom this is a that's a stout stain top of the line this is a cool tank right here it has overflow on both sides and we call that the coast to coast on the exterior this tank is going to be viewable on both long sides through a wall almost like a peninsula so you're going to run the uh herbies i'm not sure how they're plumbing it this is their spec so they gave you the specs and we built it and you go low iron on on front and back and then a tinted sides we do a drawing and shop drawing per their uh their specs for approval and that's what's on this tank then they should as it goes through the process we have that's our qa checklist so everything's got to get signed off yeah really nice and this one has a water line line that's the trim that's the trim which i guess also serves as a water line yeah yeah so we got rid of that trim we didn't have that we were like what do we do yeah on that rim list that i got i was wondering about what to do about the water line if i do a song unless you just yeah don't do that that tank in the back there that was an extra that one's sold oh the one in the back this is gonna be a big terrarium i was gonna say that that that uh top on there yeah someone could put a big bow in there or something very cool so i'm glad we could finally get the tanks look at this a little tank with an overflow box some people like that sump system tall tank look at that this tank is see for me that would be almost too much sump for that tank i mean too much overflow take up so much fish fish space but i mean some people need that when we go through and have a discussion how's the tank gonna be set up if they want this up against a wall you know how the overflow kit we saw over there where you could put it on the back you get a lot of space in the tank yeah but you can't put your holes that's right bottom of the tank that's the challenge and this might be a coral reef or something and he needs a lot of movement yeah even though it's small well amazing let's go see some more [Music] what's this one's name hey do you know there's a frog over in the next building yeah we also make acrylics this is an acrylic sump right here some regular three chamber sump with two water traps four baffles here's a whole bunch of tanks these are all acrylic so this room that we're in right now is reserved to acrylics absolutely these tanks here you see this corner and vent oh that's nice i know uh this is bent two and then on the back so this is the only one that's glued and then it's rounded this table right here behind you this is our bending table for the acrylic these are heat elements lay the acrylic over it pull it up and then we put it over there here's a piece that it got this i know nice heat up the acrylic bending table there you go it's like going behind the scenes at disneyland oh so this is a cool tank this has a black back for acrylic and then it has the front vent i love the rounded corners it looks good i think a clear for life was doing that and that tank was so nice to walk around and it had it had uh glued corners sharp corners in the back but the front was rounded and it doesn't obscure as much of the view yeah really that's for acrylics there's we have a lot of words that just came down but that's the activity we got going right now very cool that you're in acrylics i didn't know that joe that was amazing it was just so much fun i love showing this place this is incredible this is this is a lot more than just a glass and tanks and acrylic and i feel like i went to uh disney world or something or uh i don't i really i don't know i don't i don't even know what to say well i'm honored that you came and and thanks for giving me gosh a little over two hours of your time to see everything on the property yeah it's amazing i feel like i have to come back like i didn't see it all but we'll work something out oh we'll get you an annual pass that's right and i got a fish in the deal that's right you sure did all right and maybe even an aquarium we'll contact you about that okay thank you all right thank you buddy thank you appreciate it all right thank you everybody all right thanks a lot thank you all right thank you appreciate it thank you man that was fun yeah that was a blast i've never come out thank you so much for stopping by and uh if you think you're getting something out of the channel and you like the content hit that subscribe button the bell and uh and that notification icon and that tells youtube that you like the channel and will encourage youtube to uh to show the channel to other folks on youtube like you and i who keep fish also uh consider stopping by on saturday for the cichlids and coffee livestream it's at 11 a.m central it's 9 a.m pacific noon eastern and we have a great group of fish keepers that get together and talk about all things fish i hope to see you there bye-bye [Music] [Music] all right so now what we'll do is we'll do an out go okay what's now go mean that means the end okay as opposed to the ingo you know that's two words

Channel: Ben Ochart

Views: 14,872

Rating: 4.9499216 out of 5

Keywords: monster tank, monster aquarium, monster tank building, monster fish tank building, monster aquarium building, aquarium builders, aquarium builders glass cages, not what i expected, glass cages in dickson tennessee, custom tank builders, custom aquarium, custom fish tank, Ben Ochart, African Cichlids, cichlids, glasscages, custom tank building by glasscages, glasscages in tennessee

Id: -aXUlgeXHgk

Length: 34min 16sec (2056 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021