180 gallon stand

[crow79]

Hello,

I am trying to repair a stand. I had to replace the bottom due to age. The plywood I replaced it with is making one of the back corners that will be hidden hard to connect. Should I trim the plywood so it connect better? I am also going to add 1x4s along the outside and paint it. I also added some nails to help strengthen instead of just the staples. Any advice? Will this work?

 

[Kooma]

I’m always absolutely shocked at the stands that some of these tanks use. This is supposed to hold up 2500 lbs of weight for the next 5-10 years?

I don’t think is trust it to hold a 80” tv.

Personally I’d get a steel stand built and use this as a “skin” around the outside of that’s what you really want. I foresee that stand turning your living room into a tropical wading pool.

 

[Rob A]

Build a rocket engineer stand and skin it with plywood. Cheap, easy, safe.

 

[Fish Fan]

In my experience, typical stands that you get from a pet shop do indeed support the tank, but just barely

On this stand though, I'm not seeing any support under the horizontal rails, and I'm not sure what's going on with this stand, unless I'm missing something.

Can you post some additional pictures of this stand?

@BeanAnimal
@UncommonSense

 

[crow79]

In my experience, typical stands that you get from a pet shop do indeed support the tank, but just barely

On this stand though, I'm not seeing any support under the horizontal rails, and I'm not sure what's going on with this stand, unless I'm missing something.

Can you post some additional pictures of this stand?

@BeanAnimal
@UncommonSense

The stands sits on the rim

 

[Fish Fan]

The stands sits on the rim

What I'm question is, is there anything directly supporting the horizontal rail from underneath the rail in places like where I've circled here?

Notice how the vertical purple pieces are directly supporting the red and yellow horizontal rails in this picture, do you have support like that? It looks to me like you have the green pieces, but not the much more important purple pieces.

 

[UncommonSense]

What I'm question is, is there anything directly supporting the horizontal rail from underneath the rail in places like where I've circled here?

Notice how the vertical purple pieces are directly supporting the red and yellow horizontal rails in this picture, do you have support like that? It looks to me like you have the green pieces, but not the much more important purple pieces.

I’ve actually got a nearly identical stand to OP’s under my 180G!

I ended up tearing out the bottom plywood and replacing it with steel gussets in the corners to get more internal stand space for my sump… also, the factory plywood was around 1/4”-3/8”, with no framing under it to bear sump weight, if memory serves correctly…

— The vertical 1x6 you circled in the above photo is actually dadoed at the top/bottom to catch the top/bottom rail; each of those 1x6s is, actually!

It’s definitely bare-minimum, I added 2-3 screws through each of these 1x6s to both the top and bottom frame rails, plus numerous steel brackets, 1-1/8” thick plywood gussets, etc!

(There's probably an additional 200-300 screws of various sizes/types throughout my stand clamping all the parts together so nothing can spread at all and cause catastrophic failure! [note that screws are used in tension here, not shear!])

 

[UncommonSense]

Should I trim the plywood so it connect better?

Yes, you want that stand fitting together perfectly… it is not designed to be spread out even a tiny amount… also, I recommend adding some additional stand framing reinforcements as described above!

Furthermore, as mentioned above, some actual framing under the stand’s bottom plywood would be a very wise choice if you ever want to put a sump inside this stand!