sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
Well first off let me handle the last bit, this hobby is not cheap, in the grand scheme of things 250+ isn't all that horrible when you consider that unlike something like a pump or other electrical piece of equipment the sumpent will last the life of the tank and then some unless you do something to destroy it. Lets say you're only in the hobby 5 years, $50 a year isn't horrible, your PG&E bill probably will increase more per month than that. Find out how much your cut glass would cost you at a shop, you might think 250 is a bargain, and you don't have to actually do anything except slide it into position.
That said, many things in this hobby can be DIY approached, but it requires two very important things to make it cheaper first and foremost you need some skill set to do said DIY project, case in point my father is horrible at building things but he does it anyways and ends up spending more than it would cost to buy something new... and it looks like a piece of crap afterwards on top of that, there is a "picnic table" in their backyard that my child is not allowed to sit at... just saying. Second, your time has to be worth less to you than the savings you are creating, if you lose a couple months worth of weekends to save $2000 on something, then that probably is worth it, if you lose that time to save $200, it may not be worth it, really depends on the person, some people find the DIY stuff therapeutic.
First I would not go with thinner glass, unless you want to laminate two sheets together which can be done... if you know what you're doing EVA film isn't that expensive, and if you really want to go ghetto you could just use silicone between the panes, trowel it out as flat as you can then just smoosh them together, don't use much force because yeah they will break easily. That said I would probably go with acrylic baffles since it's quite a bit easier to handle and cut to the size you want. Someone mentioned chopping up another 20g tank ... that's an option too, cutting glass isn't that hard when it's relatively thin. Look for a used setup, the frequency to which people sell things is the big wild card, but someone just posted a moving sale, and one of the setups was like $50, but I believe it came with a sump, so you could have definitely just used the sump and maybe give away the other stuff, it's sold now but the point is you need to keep your eyes open.
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) if you go the DIY route.