# fish rack



## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

so as part of my fish room i am thinkign about a rack that will hold 4 25 gal aquariums. ideal ly i would liek to stack them all straght up. so the rack will be 30x13 x 6 feet high... is this going to be too tippy because of the small base on the bottom and the hig height. i am hoping to attach it to the wall but.. still any input?


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## Mr Fishies (Sep 21, 2007)

sawman88 said:


> so as part of my fish room i am thinkign about a rack that will hold 4 25 gal aquariums. ideal ly i would liek to stack them all straght up. so the rack will be 30x13 x 6 feet high... is this going to be too tippy because of the small base on the bottom and the hig height. i am hoping to attach it to the wall but.. still any input?


If you keep it perfectly level and secure it well to a wall it should work, but servicing that top tank may be a bit of a PITA? Maybe a sort of column setup (30x30x30) with tanks back to back you access from 2 sides with the short sides of the 4 tanks against a wall?

I've made the mistake of intentionally making life a bit difficult (no tanks 6 feet in the air though!) to save space or material doing things like this before and invariably I wind up costing myself money and hassle when I redo/rebuild things.


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

The top tank may be a pain to service but to make the rack stable the best thing to do is make another and attach it at a 90 degree angle. If you have an L structure you will give your self room for expansion or other storage and it will be very stable because regardless of which piece you are looking at it won't fall over because the other piece is keeping it stable.

Check out my journal/blog:

http://condofishkeeping.blogspot.com


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

humm i really like the idea of attaching the 2 togher in an L to stable its self because i REALLY didnt want to attach it to the wall since its a rental unit. althouhgh i guess there are allready 100000 holes in the walls from various things. and yeah having a tank 5 feetish in the air would be a pita but.. space is VERY limited


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

Maybe use something like my design but give yourself more room at the bottom to put a tank on the floor. It will be a bit tricky to drain but with a python hooked up to the sink it has some suction force and will be able to drain it no problem later. Just use the very top shelf for storage.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

well i decided to make it only 3 tanks high. one about 6 inched from the floor. another about 2 feet from the floor and one at like 4 feet from the floor. and the top shelf will be used as whatever. and i will definatly attach the 2 racks together to make an L


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

Best of luck with your build. Remember pine 2x4s are your friend. Especially if you rest things on the short edges.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

my only concern is if i need to rabbit the shelves in or i ca get away with the frame style w/o carriage bolts. each shelf is only going to be holding 250lbs max. i was looking at your pics and im not 100% but do you tanks not have support on the short ends? only the long ends?


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

No the short edges of each shelf are also resting on the 'discontinuous', as it call it, vertical 2x4 which runs behind the continuous one you see from the front.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

well i was looking at the pic of the non painted 2x4 one. is that not compleated.. im not critiquing just curious at what will hold. the last fish room i was at was pretty rickety i mean it looked rickety it was 100% sold. and he had liek 500 lbs per shelf lol you have glass doors? thats crazy


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

Good eye on that! Yea its funny the previous owners put the glass doors on the +1 room and when I first moved here they became the talk of the town. My friend's mom that lives here brought a few couples by to see them because they wanted to get them in their units with similar layouts.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

i wonder what the actual SHeer strength if a 3.5 #10 wood screw is


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

what happens when your significiant other gets mad and slams the door? eek..


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

If you double them up and put them off-center of each other they are very strong. Again though my design is 'overbuilt' says my structural engineer friend but it is not coming down and looks really nice because all cut ends are covered.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

what do you use for light? i see all your tanks are planted you hydro bill must be a bi*ch


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## JamesG (Feb 27, 2007)

Hydro bill for the building is pooled, part of the standard condo fee.


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## sawman88 (Sep 29, 2008)

haha suckers. my hydro is paid for now too but part of the reason im moving is becuse im tired of listening to my land lord whine about all my aquairums.. i only have 7 :/ but o well im going all energy effecant stuff so it should not be too bad . becides my new appt has a basement and i can build racks YAY


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## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

well, before I got to the part about NOT stacking them so high, I was going to suggest anchoring to the wall and ceiling to take advantage of 8 feet you have. And it wouldn't tip!

But then again, needing a ladder to service the top tank would be a b!tch.

I like the L layout too. and you can hide canisters in the unoccupied corners, or shove tank into there (since you're against canisters ).

Good luck on the build!


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## Sunstar (Jul 29, 2008)

JamesG said:


> The top tank may be a pain to service but to make the rack stable the best thing to do is make another and attach it at a 90 degree angle. If you have an L structure you will give your self room for expansion or other storage and it will be very stable because regardless of which piece you are looking at it won't fall over because the other piece is keeping it stable.
> 
> Check out my journal/blog:
> 
> http://condofishkeeping.blogspot.com


awesome room. I so want one myself....


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## Mr Fishies (Sep 21, 2007)

sawman88 said:


> i wonder what the actual SHeer strength if a 3.5 #10 wood screw is


You'd be surprised, I was. I worked with stress analysis engineers for several years and asked this question to them once when I was building a stand for someone. The quality of these screws varies a lot by manufacturer/batch etc, some will easily hold a lot more others less. I can't do the calculations, but I seem to remember they said using a conservative formula that a single #10 could hold over 250 lb in static (ie: stand is not wobbling) shear with a good safety factor. If you have 2 at each joint, 4 joints for each shelf...you do the math.

That said, James' rig, with the frame of each shelf sitting on a 2x4 stub means the screws just hold the stand together and don't support any weight - if it didn't tip, under his stand would be a good place to hide in an earthquake!

If you pre-drill to the size of the shank so the screw goes in without a lot of torque needed it helps. The axial stress of screwing them in w/o pre-drilling subtracts from the overall strength. If you want to skip the dado work and extra studs, screw and glue.


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