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Re: floor loading for 135G & stand issues...



This post is rather pertinent to me and I am wondering
what you used for your stand Bill? (4X4s? or 2X4s?) 
The reason I ask is that I am in the process of
building a stand for an eventual 200G in the basement.
 The tank measures 2X8 acryl.  I am not worried about
the load bearing because the the basement is solid
concrete (all 4 walls and the floor).
Only thing is that I don't want is the stand to give
way.  Also being in calif, I want to bolt the stand to
the walls just to be safe (whats the best way to do
this?).  I don't want to bolt it too tight because
then it has no room to move, I think it needs to have
a tiny bit of "playing room"???.  
I am going to increase the foot print by a
considerable amount by bringing the stand out an extra
6" in the front (ie 8 X 0.5' = and extra 4sqft of
footprint).  The foot print will help me when I add
extra weight because I will be putting a 50G (possibly
an 80 later on) as a sump underneath plus 2 X 30G as
grow-out and hospital tanks.
I will use the basic box design, with the loads spread
out on top (underneath the tank) and bottom (on the
floor).  I want to use mainly 4X4s to build this
beast.  You can look at a rough sketch here:  

http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~samanfar/tankstand.jpg 

Looking at the sketch, I would obviously run 2X4s
long-side the tank both on top and bottom.
I don't think I should go any higher than 4X4s because
the weight of the wood itself would be
counterproductive.  The only thing that bothers me is
that the front is left with out support (the 4X4s are
separated by 4' in the front).  I have to do this so
that I can put the 50G inside the stand, and for
practical reasons, if it leaks or needs to be
replaced, the front needs to be large enough.  If
people here think the 4' wide area is too much, I
could re-divide it to have 3' openings in the front
instead of 4 (add a pair of 4X4s 1' from the edges). 
Or a better plan would be to increase the length of
the tank to 9' (an extra 6" for each side of the
tank) and have three 4X4 studs with 3' of space in
between.
Like I said before, I think building the stand an
extra 6" wider than normal will give me extra
footprint and stability (for earthquakes).  I also
think that having the 50G + two 30G tanks on the
bottom will be more beneficial than not.  They will be
sitting on 4X4s and 2X4s laid down on the concrete,
and they will help lower the center of gravity for the
whole system.  Which brings me to another question: 
Since I want to have a 50G sump + a bit of hand room
to access it (say 6") + plus the 4X4s on the top
and bottom of the stand; the 200G's bottom will be
sitting at around 32" high.  Does this sound
reasonable?

Thanks for any advice, and your time

Saman in LA

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