plumbing through my stand for my 180 gal

AtlCPA · Sep 26, 2018

I will get a build thread going soon as a make some more progress, but in the meantime I have a plumbing question. I hesitate to ask because I believe I will get a lot of varying opinions, but here we go.

The stand for my 180 is about 5 inches wider than needed. This was done so I could fit a large sump underneath. The picture below shows partially what I'm talking about, but there is actually more room than in the pic below because the tank isn't slid all the way forward in this pic.

I have a synergy reef overflow that will come out of the back of the tank.

For plumbing (hard plumb), I have a couple options. Go out and around the stand or drill a few holes through the stand. Going through the stand would be much more preferable to me as the pipes are a little more protect and there would be less fittings to deal with.

I believe the stand is built like a tank. Like many, my contractor over engineered the stand. You can see there are 6 beams horizontally with the platform on top. When I look at it, it doesn't seem to me putting a few holes down through the stand will make a serious impact to the integrity of the stand. The holes would be in between the beams.

Does anyone think this would be a potential major problem?

143MPCo · Sep 26, 2018

You'll be fine drilling through the plywood top as most if not all of the support runs horizontally along the back edge, thus a few holes will have no ill effect on the structural integrity of that stand.

Radman73 · Sep 26, 2018

143MPCo said:
You'll be fine drilling through the plywood top as most if not all of the support runs horizontally along the back edge, thus a few holes will have no ill effect on the structural integrity of that stand.

Concur. As long as you're only hitting plywood, you're good to go. Also, flexPVC can be your friend if you need minor redirection to ensure you only hit plywood. Pretty sure most of us wish our stands were slightly oversized!