Once the decision for a 240G long (8'x2'x2') glass tank from Glasscages had been made, the hurdle I needed to overcome was arranging transport for the thing from their factory down in Tennessee to my place in NE Ohio. At the time Glasscages was just starting to explore a delivery option via some trucking company they were working with, but the cost was significant. Also, delivery was not to my place, but to a warehouse, and I didn't have easy access to a truck to bring the tank home. Eventually things worked out in the way that Glasscages had so many orders from the NE Ohio region that they ran a truck up to a parking lot in Columbus, from where all the people who had ordered tanks could pick them up at a pre-arranged time.

The Glasscages truck (background) in a parking lot in Columbus, OH. Lined up in the front are the vehicles of numerous customers, waiting to take their pre-ordered tanks home.

For delivery to Columbus they charged a flat $100, and I managed to hire a van from Enterprise for $60 with unlimited miles to make the trip from Kent to Columbus and back. I ended up ordering a range of accessories for the tank from Glasscages as well. These included:

• tank ($450)
• oak stand ($450)
• oak canopy ($300)
• hinged glass tops ($60)
• two built-in overflow boxes ($70)
• two 2" bulkheads ($30)

The dollar figures are 2005 prices and have probably gone up by now.

After talking to a few other people who had ordered tanks as well, I felt that the delivery fee to Columbus was somewhat negotiable, as was the option of home delivery. For example after dropping the tanks off in Columbus, Glasscages proceeded to deliver a single 240G tank - the same as mine, but the glass tank only - to a small town in Michigan. So while overall I was very happy with the deal, I figured that by means of negotiation I might have been able to convince Glasscages to deliver the tank to my home and/or get the delivery for free. Yet, I felt luckier than another guy who had ordered a smaller custom built tank, and had driven up from Cincinnati to pick it up in Columbus, not knowing that the Glasscages truck had run virtually past his house that same morning when they delivered another tank to a somewhat tougher negotiator in Cincinnati.

Regarding the accessories, overflow boxes are pretty much a must if you want to use a sump system for filtration, and the bulk heads you can't get much cheaper anywhere else. I guess Glasscages is not in the business of making money by selling bulkheads, so they were selling these cheaper than any other place I had checked.

On the way home we had quite some snowfall, and I was glad to have the Enterprise van complete with my new tank safely at home in Kent, OH.

My new setup made it inside in two stages. Initially I had four people come over to help me lift it from the van into the garage, where I varnished the stand and canopy

Once the stand and canopy had been varnished and the place in the living room had been prepared (for example, I had to move a light switch and the controls for the heating/air conditioning of the house), the tank was moved inside by six people. There are no photos of this, since everybody seemed to have their hands full!

View of my living room with the tank setup and well established. When the photo was taken it had been running for well over two years.

Addendum July 2007:

By now the price of the tank has jumped to $590. It seems that Glasscages has finally realized that they can sell this tank for way more than they were asking. At the same time the price of the matching oak stand has only increased slightly ($500) and the canopy is still the same ($300).