What to use for added floor support?

[oldfart]

Folks..not that I wish to be an alarmist here but I looked over Jims math (and am quite sure it is correct) and I'm wondering about it. Bear with me now and let me explain. The aquarium sits flat on 9sq.ft. of surface...if it lays flat on the floor. Right? 2000lbs. on an area roughtly the size of a 1/4 sheet of plywood. (a standard 4x8 sheet of plywood=32sq. ft.) ..give or take 1 sq.ft. of surface. Yup..this is kin to 10 normal sized (200lb.) men... standing side-by-side....if they're all 10ft. tall and have 12in. waists, no hips or shoulders. All I'm sayin' is.... think about it. Comparing it to a water-bed doesn't work. A Queen-Sized water bed spreads the load out over a 35sq.ft. (5ft.X7ft.) area. Big difference. I'm not saying the floor won't hold it..but know what yer doing. In many instances these are particle-board floors...my floor-joists are 20+inches apart and outside the 2 steel frame rails (read outside walls) there may be little or NO support within' the area of the aquarium. Just my thoughts. Audie..the Oldfart..

[Ocellairs]

I hate to make this post even more technical that it's getting, but is this tank going to be fresh or salt water?

[Raynebowfish]

I get what you guys are saying, I am going to go over kill on added support. Just in case. Otherwise I won't be able to sleep at night. I still need to go under there and see what I'm dealing with. Bit difficult with a 2 1/2 yr old and a 5 month old I think Saturday is the day that works, the fish tank is coming on Tuesday. So time is short...

The tank stand is SOLID wood, very heavily built, I am putting it on a solid wood piece, to spread weight.
I am doing freshwater. I keep polypterus, I would've been okay with the 75gal, but I found a great deal on what was supposed to be a 15" fish, that's more like 20", it was going well til the beast bit my black ghost knife's tail off.

Saturday, I will know for sure how the joists and steel beams run, I'll let you all know.

[Ocellairs]

When I had freshwater I thought about getting a BGK. But went with freshwater sting rays instead.

Bah, I misspelled Ocellaris when I signed up in a hurry, but I've been doing reef tanks for years now and filtration for that on a salt water tank would have added an extra 40+ gallons to the system.

If at all possible, I'm sure you know this by now, put the tank in the easiest spot to do water changes. Wet floors are a no no here.

[Raynebowfish]

I've got it about 10' from the sink, I use a Python for water changes and just drain it outside, away from the house I tell all the people on my fish forum that water (besides fire) is the enemy.
Buckets got old very fast when I had a 60gal, 2 20's, 4 10's and 5 1gal tanks. I would spend 6 hours doing WC on those. (back when I lived with my dad, I had these set-up in the basement) I know I could've staggered it, and I could have changed less than half the water, but once I would start on one tank, I knew if I didn't do the rest, they'd never get done.
Python is my best friend now
Sting rays are awesome! One of the people on Minnfish had theirs breed. Some one else built a stingray pond in their basement. On Monsterfishkeepers, there is a huge thread on the guy who built a 50,000 gallon tank into his house...I would hate to see the electric and water bill on that!

[Ocellairs]

I hear you on the buckets part. My salt water tank is super easy to due water changes.

I drilled a hole in my filtration sump below the tank. It has a bulkhead and a valve to drain water out the door by a garden hose when needed. Then to fill my tank, I just have a rubber maid tub a few feet above my sump that I use to mix my salt water with and drain that into my sump. So I don't even deal with the python anymore. But I have a RO/DI unit that spits out into the rubber maid bucket. I just need to lift about 10 cups of salt from floor level.

Check out sumps for your freshwater, I seriously don't understand why they aren't used for freshwater at all. They are way cheaper if you build your own, mine I built out of a 30 gallon tank, you can hide all your accessories there, like heaters, CO2 systems, WAY BETTER filtration than canisters, or HOB types, because you pick your media and how much, and tons of etc... Really does makes water changes a lot easier if you plan it right.

Plus, since you have MTS (Mulitple tank syndrome) you can have 1 sump and use 1 big pump to pump to all your tanks. I'm sure if you're using fresh tap water that none of your fish a that delicate without aging the water first that they all could be run under the same filtration. I'm guessing you have bettas in the 1 gallons. So you'd only have to do 1 water change from the sump instead doing each one individually. Fish stores do this with their wall displays. Imagine doing their water changes with out a central filtration system.

I use to have MTS bad in fresh water. I had my main cichlid tank, other odd balls, planted tank, brackish and feeder guppy tanks. At most I had 7 running at once. Now that I'm doing my reef tank I only have 1. It's more time consuming and attention demanding, but no harder than fresh if you keep the parameters right.


When I made the jump to salt, I felt over whelmed at first with all this new and expensive technology for filtration, but most of it is easy DIY stuff that helped cut down on cost a lot. But as different as I tried to go with freshwater, I still seemed limited to only a few "cool" fish that lost their novelty fast. So in a way, my wife is happy I only have 1 tank and my kids are happy that they have "nemo" and "Dory" fish.


Now back to our regularly scheduled thread......

[Greg]

OK Folks, it's time to lock this up, we have gone from supports to changing water to salt vs fresh water. Greg