How To Brace Floor For Aquarium

How do you brace a floor for aquarium its a 300gal.

How to brace floor for aquarium.

Put those together and down on floor crossways of floor joist. I used 18000 lb floor jacks in my basement under my larger tanks. Assuming identical size joists so the next best location is in the room that has the strongest floor. Lets say 1 in 4 so what you can do is rip 2x4 s from 1 to nothing.

The only problem with it is that the bottom trim or whatever it s called the plastic usually black that goes around the perimeter of the aquarium is broken. Go into your basement and look up at the floor joists. I use a 2 pc of board 14x32 or so to span 3 or 4 floor joists and lock in place with the jack direct onto the concrete floor. If you are going to add a brace and i would just because well cheap insurance a brace made of 2x material i d use 2x6 s with a piece of 3 4 plywood of equal length width sandwiched between glued and screwed will be pretty much impervious to flex.

The 75 gallon is now empty at home as i drained it before leaving. Since i have more experience with nuts bolts metal i chose that route. I ve also had seen 4 and even 6 tanks that were made without center braces. The 120 will put more weight on the floor due to it being 4 long.

Cut a peice of plywood the size of your stand. A friend of mine gave me a 75 gallon aquarium that they havent used for over a year. This is where you want you beam. We didn t brace the floor yet because i found my cat stoned and kicked out the housemate and his friend who were going to brace it.

It could way as much as 1 800 lbs when full of water an. Stabilizes the entire room. Sit you stand on it and the put a peice of trim around the bottom to hide the 2 bys and plywood. Load bearing walls are your best friend.

You could always check the floor to see how bad it is out of level. You can have up to a 200 gallon aquarium on the second floor. Place beam in place with the jacking post. This video shows how i braced my subfloor to support the weight of my 150 gallon extra high aquarium.

2x lumber by itself is more prone to warping twisting as it dries. I had already been planning to get some help to brace the floor when i get home before refilling it and putting the fish back in. Beam will run the length of the tank but you want each end of the beam to extend to the joist beyond where the end of your tank stand is before you start jacking take a measurement from the basement floor to the bottom of the joists. Wherever the joists span the shortest distance will be the room with the strongest floor framing and wherever the joists span the greatest distance will be the weakest room in the house.