How important is a perfectly level tank??

Meche · Aug 11, 2006

I told them the faster they do it the sooner I will give them my money for thier service. apparently they don't need my money as much as I need thier service.

ROFLMAO:lol:

Actually if you think about it the thick glass is strapped on the bottom & top thus making that the strongest support, I guess the weight is supported by the sides just as much as the bottom would. Once you put that tank on a flat surface the bands will still be touching supporting the weight, my old stand had no surface just a parameter support for the tank. To me I'd think the foam over the entire bottom would work better but these companies will only warranty their stands & if you look at them they support only where that strap is, I don't totally understand their reasoning but I do know that most manufactures do it this way so there must be science to it. That part maybe someone who really knows why they to it this way would chime in, I'd like to see that, to me that foam would work just as good but I don't have the science to prove that. If you can I'd try & see how they make their stands.

OK, first off, I know nothing about big tanks. The biggest tank I've seen except at the aquarium or some bogus contraption at the LFS, is a 75 Gal. Second, I'm on day 28 of my first ever fish tank (except my 10 Gal "prerequisite to puberty" FW tank

).

But... I am a mechanical engineer and if these custom glass tanks are of the same construction as the smaller standard ones then I think I can help. Your intuition is correct. If you preloaded the bottom panel (or stuffed foam into the gap between the bottom glass and the stands surface) you could effectivly reduce the amount of load that the bottom glass panel would see. However if it is not done evenly or you used too stiff of a foam you could endup with more problems (like little pockets of concentrated load). This problem can be compounded if the entire surface is not completely flat. It is much easyer to make a box's edges flat than an entire surface flat. So a tank builder might leave this gap (using the black plastic strips around the bottom of the tank or removing the middle of the stand) and use a sufficiently thick piece of glass to eliminate thoes unknowns.

However the side panels do not support any weight other than their own and anything you have on top of the tank (ie hood, fish food, lights etc.)