Tip of the Day – 4/26/2012

If you are planning to put your aquarium on a second floor or on a floor with a crawl space underneath, be sure the floor is either already strong enough to hold the weight or reinforced to handle the load. Large aquarium can get quite heavy. The tanks themselves weight several hundreds of pounds, and after you add in live rock, sand, and water weight, the tank could easily exceed a ton. To help spread the load, try getting an aquarium with a large footprint. Tanks that are taller than they are wide exert a greater amount of force over a smaller area, increasing the risk that the tank may damage the floor underneath it.