using shimms

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
It's good to get various opinions. People can decide what they are comfortable with. Even with shims, you still need to do it right. One aspect of the discussion is the tank bottom.

Having a floating bottom tank (glass walls not sitting on the bottom plate) makes it much harder for the bottom to crack. The tank weight is taken directly by the vertical walls sideways - edgeways (which is how glass is stored). So a 60cm high tank becomes a 60cm thick piece of glass which is incredibly strong in that direction. The bottom "floats" and flexes accordingly on polystyrene. For very long tanks (12 foot + ) split bottoms are recommended. I've never had a bottom crack but I've had silicon seams fail.

My first fish room was built on a shoestring budget so I deliberately overhung 150 tanks end side out by 75mm off the stand. Just dangled out in the air but they were only 45cm high. This allowed me to place my horizontal drainage pipe fittings directly onto the tank bottom - saving me the cost of extra fittings and gaining some vertical height tank clearance. Even a $3 saving per tank rapidly accumulates when you get lots of tanks.
 
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Corner to corner imbalance, the tank is not level from front to back crossways X, the tank twists, and the glass often fails.
 
bathawk said:
ok thanks the thought of a 72x30x24 tank full of water failing is terrifying.
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I'm in the same boat as you I recently got 2 new aquariums, a 108x24x28, and a 96x24x28, currently, both are sitting severely unlevel! Both of these tanks were built on-site but the stands and sumps were brought to me, for me to level these aquariums which I must do I am going to need to try to shim under the backside of the stand and there is literally no room, that being said I can slide the sumps about 2ft to allow me to try and reach into the hard to get areas.

The 108 inch tank is going to be my first ever stingray aquarium (mini marble motoro) and the 96-inch tank is an upgrade for my current African cichlids, these guys are going into a tank that's 2x longer and 2x wider than their current. (I cannot wait until I can fill them!)

I am debating getting a piece of wood (cut to the thickness I need) near enough to the length of the stand and just jacking it up slightly and sliding it under, my other issue with my setup is the stands don't look very strong, I'm thinking of beefing them up and adding more supports across the centre to stop twisting.

(video of my tanks:
)
 
yes I have 2x4 planks some say 2x6 would have been better so I intend to over build the satand to compensate I will have enough left over wood to do that wow you got some tanks there . 3 of us managed get my tank from the garage to my living room the tanks weighs 183kg but 3 of us got it in the house using those suction cups . I saw a guy on you tube who had 8 foot by foot tank into his basement they had to use a jeep strapped to the tank with jeep slowly reversing the slowly slid down the steps into the basement It had some support under the tank to protect it.
 
bathawk said:
yes I have 2x4 planks some say 2x6 would have been better so I intend to over build the satand to compensate I will have enough left over wood to do that wow you got some tanks there . 3 of us managed get my tank from the garage to my living room the tanks weighs 183kg but 3 of us got it in the house using those suction cups . I saw a guy on you tube who had 8 foot by foot tank into his basement they had to use a jeep strapped to the tank with jeep slowly reversing the slowly slid down the steps into the basement It had some support under the tank to protect it.
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Yeah, my stand is 2x4 and it's not looking too strong, the guy that did everything for me has 30 years of experience and said it will be fine but id rather take the precautions and be safe rather than sorry, Tanks are super heavy and when you fill them there unbelievably heavy, not to mention if you are using dense large rocks/stones. I even imagine someone reversing their tank down the stairs with jeep, but hey if it works it works right! ?
 
yes the video of them lowering the tank is on youtube it was crazy but they got it down into the basement
 
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