Loaches Online Forum

The tank would go about two feet on the other side of the "beam." The spray foam is about 4 or 5 feet away from the "beam."

It seems the total span of those joists from the outside wall (foundation) to where kate marked my knocking on the "beam" is about 6.5 feet (from above). From below, the "beam" to the spray foam is more like 4.5 or 5 feet. I don't think there's supposed to be a foot of spray foam, but there does look like a lot of it.

I think the tank would pretty well go right in the middle of that span, or a bit toward the "beam."

Kind of scary, but we are picking it up tomorrow.

Won't fill it until the engineering work is done...

We just brought it home. Is only 10F out, and dropping fast, so couldn't really leave it out in the car, so we had to bring it in ourselves. Wow it's big!!!

Stand is still on top of the car.

I know the stand has been supporting it, and was made for it, but it doesn't look sturdy enough!

Yes, I am scared....

Glad that you got the 120. In the long run, you will be glad that you did.

Let's see pictures of the tank and stand and maybe we can have an idea of whether the stand is built well enough or not.

Hope your floor doesn't cave in! I agree with Keith, you'll probably be happy you bought a big tank. When we bought our 120L, we wanted a bigger one by the time we had filled it with water.

I'm going to build a stand for our next tank (375L), which I think will be both stronger, and less expensive than a factory-made one. How it'll look is another thing

Your floor looks better supported than it sounded at first.

I'm not worried about the stand. It's minimal construction all right, but I think it's strong enough. All the (thin) wood will bear the weight straight down, and it won't buckle. There's a big span across the top though -- support at each end and the middle only!

The tank is thick glass and tempered glass at that.

Now I've just got to go to sears to buy some jacks, and buy some styrofoam or see what I've got in the garage.

There it is!

It looks really nice!

I bought the smallest floor screw jacks that home depot had (they were
the only place open at the hour of my errand run). Unfortunately I
bought them without measuring the distance of floor to joist. Floor
jacks minimum of 19 inches, actual distance is 13 inches. If I keep
them I'll have to excavate, which isn't impossible.

the other option is to just get a PT 2 x 12 and also make PT wedges. Drive
the wedges between the concrete pavers I bought and the 2 x 12 until it's
pushing the beam. Seem reasonable? I might also have to somehow block around the 2x12 at the top to keep it stable in the vertical plane, so it won't buckle or collapse.

I think that could work, but it might be a lot harder to get the support really solid with wedges as opposed to just jacking it up. I see they are not listed at Home Depot, but the source company for the jack posts has a smaller size that goes from 12 to 15 inches. It might be worth ordering them. See

http://www.tigerbrandjackpost.com/super_s.htm

Just a thought. It is so much easier and you get a better result if you have the right tool.

Mr. Cloudhands spent a whole day under there in the 15" crawlspace gettign the floor jacks in, then we filled it partially, and started planting it. Monday was fish rodeo day, and here is the tank now:



Still have a lot of work to do on the aquascaping, especially as the last piece of driftwood was hastily thown in as loaches were falling out of it , but the fishies seem VERY happy to have all this room to swim )

yeah!!
beautiful work!
what a lovely stand (I really love the color) and a great bit of breathing room for the loaches (also well supported from beneath, I understand)

congrats! That is a really lovely set up and a lot of sweat and hardwork that has come to fruition. ENJOY!!!!!

EXACTLY what fish do you have in there at this point?
What are your plans with all that space!!!