Can my Floors handle this?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I wouldn't go higher than 28" as 30" doors arent' always 30" not everyone installs them right. either that or go taller but not so wide. say 72"X28"X36" also I would want to know what the floor was made of as was mentioned earlier. I personally wouldn't sleep well unless I did some extra support. I removed a frame from under a mobile home once with a friend and set in on 4 stands one on each corner. the frame sagged over 8" at the middle. thatsure changed my opinion of their strength. they arer made to go down the road once then sit there for the rest of their lives. I don't want to discourage you but just think it over and do your homework on what you will need to do to the house to support the tank properly.
 
why are you stuck in that house for 3 years? move out when the elase is up and move somewhere with a garage so you can get serious about a monster tank. do you even realize how much floor space is going to be used up by a 8X4 or 10X4 tank? LOL theres no way you're going to have a tank that size in your house for long before something either breaks or you get sick and tired of all the space it takes up and want to break it down.

If it were me, I agree.

but the poster seems cool with it.

one thing to realize too is that the tank will take up a little more room than the footprint itself, even with a sump system, you need some space behind the tank to get at stuff, clean slashes against the wall etc.

eg. a 72x18" tank in actual fact takes up a 6x2 space, a 6x2 space takes up a little more etc.

in my fishroom I was limited to a 72x18 tank because a 6x2 tank would basically mean that our backs would be too close to my fireplace when viewing the tank.

they do take up a lot of room, thats for sure. you don't realize it until its setup.
 
yea that makes sense, then im going to cut it down to 40" VS 4'
 
Ok so the tank is going to be 8'x40"x2' giving me 305gallons
 
AndrewMack;3257143; said:
Ok so the tank is going to be 8'x40"x2' giving me 305gallons

I'm still confused if the tank will be running parallel or perpendicular to the beams?

In a previous response to me you seemed to indicate that the tank would be perpendicular since you said it would span "at least two beams". At the time the tank was proposed at 12' long which would be three beams at a minimum or four beams at the most, so I'm a confused.

The width was only 4' so if it were to run parallel it could only span two beams at the most, not at the least.

Either way your answer was not clear.

I just want to make sure as if the tank will be parallel then cutting down on the width might not be the best idea, especially if that means the tank goes from resting on two beams to zero, which is very well possible.

Let's assume the best case scenario with a 40" wide tank resting on one beam. That's 3191 water-weight pounds on one beam.

If you bump the tank up to 48" interior width the water weight will go up to 3830 pounds, but if it's supported by two beams then each beam is only holding 1915 pounds.

This is why I'm stressing parallel vs. perpendicular orientation.
 
if it was 12' long it would be over at least 2 beams sense they run 4' apart, depending on there they run, if i located the tank correctly it would be over 3 . but i am making this much smaller due to the fact i do not wanna crawl under my spider infested house to reinforce. so now the tank is gunna be 8'long 40"deep and 24"tall
 
or i could do 12'x2'x2' and make a hella cichlid tank
 
AndrewMack;3257673; said:
if it was 12' long it would be over at least 2 beams sense they run 4' apart, depending on there they run, if i located the tank correctly it would be over 3 . but i am making this much smaller due to the fact i do not wanna crawl under my spider infested house to reinforce. so now the tank is gunna be 8'long 40"deep and 24"tall

You're still not answering the question.

If the tank was 12' long and ran perpendicular it could span as many as FOUR beams. First beam at 0', second at 4', third at 8', and the fourth at 12'. That's four beams, not three.

I think you are/were just taking 12' and dividing it by 4' to get three. That's not the way it works since the "first" beam essentially starts at 0'.

Still, I take all this to mean that the tank will be running perpendicular to the beams.

Is that correct?

As such, cutting down on the width is a good idea. I would make darn sure the tank spans three beams, even if you have to make the tank a hair longer to accomplish that.

Again, an 8' tank can span up to three beams if they are 4' on center.
 
yes you are correct, my bad. I wouldnt mind doing the cichlid tank i could get a aro in it for about a year before i needed a wider tank
 
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