Thinking of a rack...

Oblio said:

View attachment 162923

Click to expand...

Oh wow!
I never thought Vietnamese writing would look like that!

Rocky998 said:

Oh wow!
I never thought Vietnamese writing would look like that!

Click to expand...

I believe it is because of the French colonial influence.

Oblio said:

I believe it is because of the French colonial influence.

Click to expand...

Hmm possibly!

Fishmanic said:

or were you thinking of this type of rack??

Click to expand...

Yes, but not vegetarian... The protein version... Hey, I believe this is the decent way to put it...

Lynnzer said:

I hope someone has a solution rather than pointless jokes.

Click to expand...

Like already mentioned before: It was just the name of the thread...

Rocky998 said:

What language is that on the FB link??
Looks like it's a European language

Click to expand...

It looks more like Thai to me...

There are so many DIY racks for this purpose. I myself have used metal racks for my tanks And one wooden rack.

emeraldking said:

It looks more like Thai to me...

Click to expand...

Thai has it's own, non Western alphabet. IIRC, the French either gave the Vietnamese their alphabet, or for some reason it improved upon the original so they retained it after the French left.

Vietnamese was historically written using Chữ Nôm, a logographic script using Chữ Hán (Chinese characters) to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, together with many locally-invented characters to represent other words.[5][6] French colonial rule of Vietnam led to the official adoption of the Vietnamese alphabet (Chữ Quốc ngữ) which is based on Latin script. It uses digraphs and diacritics to mark tones and some phonemes.

emeraldking said:

Yes, but not vegetarian... The protein version... Hey, I believe this is the decent way to put it...

Click to expand...

Wooooooow... You actually went there

Blimey this one spiralled... what is it with my threads at the moment lol. The title was all about aquarium racks FYI.

Back in the fold said:

Okay kids , back on topic. @Wills can you make your own rack from wood ? Building your own lets you have the spacing and dimension you really want. The basic tools you will need are common and if you don't have them everybody else does and will usually loan them to you , or better yet , build your project for you to showcase their skills.

Click to expand...

I have wondered about DIY I've seen a few and I do have a lot of tools but not the skills to go with it! It has made me think though...

Lynnzer said:

I hope someone has a solution rather than pointless jokes. I thought about a similar thing myself some time ago but the one thing that put me off it, apart from the wife, was the uncertainty of the floor strength. I'd hate to fill a rack with tanks full of water and see it crash into the kitchen.

Click to expand...

Very good point, mine would be on ground floor on solid concrete, I suppose when you look at the size I'm thinking it could be 100kg per shelf x 3 so 300 litres. I think that would be ok for where mine is.

Slaphppy7 said:

@Wills, I have an easy DIY design for tank stands, but can't seem to find it on my home PC...I know I have it saved at work...I'll try to remember to post it here tomorrow

Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll keep an eye out, I am intrigued by the DIY side but also quite terrified haha!

AquaBarb said:

Facebook market place would be a good starting place Wills.

Log into Facebook

Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

www.facebook.com

Good deals like above on there all the time.

Click to expand...

Yeah I've seen quite a few on there but I want something that looks nice too and a lot of them look pretty rough. Probably quite a bit I could do to DIY it but wondering if I could get it cheaper and more what I want visually if I build my own kit?

Did you get a tank from NACD Aquatics? I've been having a look at their prices and they look pretty good!

Back in the fold said:

There are some very good metal racks out there and the manufacturers provide load information. @Lynnzer mentioned floor strength. That is a very important consideration and you should consult a contractor if you are planning a very heavy load. The advantage to wood , in my mind , is that you can make it look nice with your choice of finish. Metal looks commercial and utilitarian to me. That is a consideration depending on what room of the house it's going into. With wood don't assemble it with nails or screws on the load bearing portions. Bolt it together because nails and screws break .

Click to expand...

Definitely a consideration of how it looks and I can picture the wooden ones looking good, I've seen some metal ones with wooden shelves but annoyingly they dont have weight limits on them so imagine they are just decorative.

emeraldking said:

Yes, but not vegetarian... The protein version... Hey, I believe this is the decent way to put it...

Like already mentioned before: It was just the name of the thread...

It looks more like Thai to me...

There are so many DIY racks for this purpose. I myself have used metal racks for my tanks And one wooden rack.
View attachment 162925

Click to expand...

This is cool, what do you look for in your racks when you buy them? Anything in particular or am I just over thinking it?

Wills said:

Did you get a tank from NACD Aquatics? I've been having a look at their prices and they look pretty good!

Click to expand...

Yes brought a small 5 gallon from nacd. Really good value and well built for the money.

D.i.y sounds a good option for you so you can tailor the racking to whatever dimensions you need. Fun and more rewarding also

With a 70 cm max footprint, DIY should be quite easy, since you can put vertical supports between the tanks. It is the larger spans that get trickier. Then you need to beef things up to keep bending moment deformities down and be extra careful with the placement and size of any holes.

you could build something like this in metal square tubing which would hold 6 tanks of different sizes plus a nano shrimp tank
spray paint it and put it in the living room and look like furniture so Maria doesn't beat your ass.
Always disguise it as furniture...that's the secret with maria...don't go around making out of wood and looking like trash...
Make it presentable so when someone comes over she can brag about it even if she hates fish xD
Those lines would be overflow lines behind the tanks so you'd only change water in the top tank and it would be a single system
bottom right could be a sump if you so wished...
or better yet...make it so it fits the tv and have the TV in the centre of it all so it acts as a tv stand slash fish rack xD

kiko said:

View attachment 162968
you could build something like this in metal square tubing which would hold 6 tanks of different sizes plus a nano shrimp tank
spray paint it and put it in the living room and look like furniture so Maria doesn't beat your ass.
Always disguise it as furniture...that's the secret with maria...don't go around making out of wood and looking like trash...
Make it presentable so when someone comes over she can brag about it even if she hates fish xD
Those lines would be overflow lines behind the tanks so you'd only change water in the top tank and it would be a single system
bottom right could be a sump if you so wished...
or better yet...make it so it fits the tv and have the TV in the centre of it all so it acts as a tv stand slash fish rack xD

Click to expand...

At a minimum, you need a vertical member from the bottom right of the center tank/TV that carries straight down to the floor. Otherwise the top right tank will cause a clockwise twisting moment of the center tank. It really needs vertical members in compression on both bottom corners extending to the bottom.
You can get creative like this when storing knick-knacks that are a few kilos, but with dozens, or possibly hundreds of kilos, you need to have basic statics knowledge.

Not the same failure mode, but an interesting result of what can happen without checking the design (or modifications) Check out the drawing at the following link.

Oblio said:

At a minimum, you need a vertical member from the bottom right of the center tank/TV that carries straight down to the floor. Otherwise the top right tank will cause a clockwise twisting moment of the center tank. It really needs vertical members in compression on both bottom corners extending to the bottom.
You can get creative like this when storing knick-knacks that are a few kilos, but with dozens, or possibly hundreds of kilos, you need to have basic statics knowledge.

Click to expand...

you have the support in the center the middle top horizontal will push to the side and its weight added to the middle support much like "roman bridges" work...
as long as the middle top horizontal on both left/right sides are pushing in the vertical middle and the bottom of that centre square has a middle support the weight will be distributed into those supports
also...cheapest way to build this would be sheet metal around .080-.100 thickness cold roll rusts easy so I'd go with galvanized.
You can look up metal processing plants in your city and call them up to buy their "trash" which will be a LOT cheaper
than buying prime material which would run you over at more than 150$ a single sheet of 48x96"
do all the bending/welding/cutting at home and voilá...should look fancy after being spray painted etc... xD

this is the price of prime steel...
which is literally a strip of 1.5"x4 (6") by 96" long
a full prime sheet at 48x96 costs around 200 which can make 8 of these....
trash metal which doesn't mean rust...it can just be a flatness issue from a crappy coil/operator or surface defects or coating most processing plants will sell it cheap or throw it away at scrap value.

No, the whole thing as drawn will rotate around the bottom support. Unless, and this was not specified, the entire back (or at least corners), has a stiffener attached to mitigate any bending moments. If the material was infinitely strong, or way overbuilt, it would work with negligible deformation, but in the real world, and very large dead loads, this is a poor design from an engineering standpoint.

Looking closer, it could work, depending on the loads, if the back of the center section was covered with a panel, which would save weight and cost.