fermentedhiker
Well-Known Member
I'm mulling over building a full on fish room. Playing around with the idea of large frag tanks. Debating about building one out of plywood vs one of the fiberglass troughs. 4'x8'x12" for either option. The troughs would undoubtedly cost me more but there wouldn't be any labor tied up in them and they wouldn't leak.
While I'm weighing the pros and cons of those options I'm debating about how to build a stand for them. Obviously want minimum obstructions to make maintenance on the sump easy but 4x8 is a pretty large area.
First option is what I traditionally do. which is just your typical framed stand with dimensional lumber 2x6 rim and base with 2x4 uprights overlapped in the corners with a post on both sides at the midpoint and crossbraces on the top rim and two layers of 3/4" plywood for the top. this would make for a maximum 4' span in any direction. Water weight would be just under 2000lbs and volume would be a little under 240 gallons. The plus is I can do this myself with locally sourced materials. Drawback is the amount of space the dimensional lumber takes up. Also I normally would skin such a stand to prevent racking but in this case I would want it as open as possible for maintenance. There is alwayAnyones the chance that I under engineer it and leads to a failure or at a minimum a tear down and rebuild.
Option two would be have a metal stand welded up from square tube and have it powder coated or epoxy dipped depending on what I can find. Con is cost. Moving the stand in place may be a weight issue for me to install solo
Option three would be to make it from 80/20. Cons are I don't know much about it's load capacity. Having never worked with it I don't really know much about it at all actually, although it does on the surface seem like an attractive option.
Anyone care to weigh in on these or other options?
While I'm weighing the pros and cons of those options I'm debating about how to build a stand for them. Obviously want minimum obstructions to make maintenance on the sump easy but 4x8 is a pretty large area.
First option is what I traditionally do. which is just your typical framed stand with dimensional lumber 2x6 rim and base with 2x4 uprights overlapped in the corners with a post on both sides at the midpoint and crossbraces on the top rim and two layers of 3/4" plywood for the top. this would make for a maximum 4' span in any direction. Water weight would be just under 2000lbs and volume would be a little under 240 gallons. The plus is I can do this myself with locally sourced materials. Drawback is the amount of space the dimensional lumber takes up. Also I normally would skin such a stand to prevent racking but in this case I would want it as open as possible for maintenance. There is alwayAnyones the chance that I under engineer it and leads to a failure or at a minimum a tear down and rebuild.
Option two would be have a metal stand welded up from square tube and have it powder coated or epoxy dipped depending on what I can find. Con is cost. Moving the stand in place may be a weight issue for me to install solo
Option three would be to make it from 80/20. Cons are I don't know much about it's load capacity. Having never worked with it I don't really know much about it at all actually, although it does on the surface seem like an attractive option.
Anyone care to weigh in on these or other options?
