Unlevel tank, how bad can this be????

A family memeber of mine is setting up a 75 gal tank in a very old house. The floors are very, VERY unlevel. I know small tanks like 10 gal aren't really a problem. But a large tank like 75 has me concerned that it will tip, or have uneven pressure on one of the sides of the tank causing a blowout. Should she be concerned about this?

 

yes you should be concerned. how much is it off??

 

Try to level the stand supporting it as much as possible first.

Use larger wedges for support vs. smaller to reduce pressure points as well.

 

I have done so, and it generally isn't a problem. Shims will likely be needed to level it though...

 

Tanks not up yet. She didn't even buy it yet. The house is so old I don't know if shims will help. Oh, and it would be way off. When I had my 10 gal in it, one side of the tank waster was at the top and the other side had almost an inch between surface water and the top of the tank...and that was 10 gal!

 

If u navigate to the "General" forum and then to the "I made this!" Sub-forum u can see in the stickers way up top a thread about how to easily level an old floor that I posted a while ago. See if that's something u would like to try.
I would link u, but I'm on my phone and that feature isn't activated on tapatalk.

Let me know if u want to give it a go.


Sent from my phone using my two opposable digits

 

I got you magnus,

http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/leveling-floor-put-stand-99567.html

 

Wow, that's pretty far off That could be an issue. I had a tank set up in an old house and it was off by about the same amount, but that was a 55g LOL.

 

You definitely need to start with a level stand. I had a neighbor who set up a 55g FW tank a couple years ago on unlevel floor. The water level from end to end was only off by maybe 1/2 inch, but in just a few months, the solid wood stand started leaning. He had to cable it to a wall to keep it from collapsing.

A lot of people don't realize just how many hundreds of pounds they have sitting in such a small space with an aquarium full of rocks and water, and if it isn't level... well, gravity works.

 

If you are concerned with it tipping, then yes, I wouldn't ever put a tank there without serious leveling!! I might be more concerned about just living there...much less putting more than 600 lbs of water on the floor!