Converting A Bedroom Into A Fish Room?

[xxBarneyxx]

In short I don't have the space in my house to set up any more tanks and the only room I could use to turn into a fish room is my spare bedroom.

I'm very worried about having large amounts of water on an upstairs floor. Has anyone else converted a bedroom into a fish room?

The room is about 12ftX15ft, floorboards are fairly old (at least 20 years).
I plan on having at least 1 large tank in there (most likely something along the lines of a 5x2x2) and a couple of smaller ones (3ft/18inch talls) and a rack of small breeding/fry growing/nano tanks.

I'm thinking what I will have to do is remove the floorboards and reinforce the beams. Replace the floorboards and build units against the walls to hold the tanks (with the units attached to the walls to help distribute weight and add stability and strength to them).

Is it necessary go this far? Would just building the cabinets against/attached to the walls suffice (maybe with larger boards of wood under the stand to spread the weight a bit more)?

Or should I abandon the idea all together (its a lot of weight and a lot of water and I really don't want my fish room to end up falling into my dinning room ).

 

[dane261]

unless you have concrete floors which you dont, dont bother as you will have a in house waterfall

dane

 

[Yetti]

If you are up to the challenge, then you could add on a room to your house. Maybe you could even customize it to have drains and water sources, also some heating would not hurt.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Yeah I was speaking to a builder friend this evening and he said it could be done but would cost loads

Think I need to move

 

[adamgreen240]

too be honest i wouldnt chance it !

i would be an absolute diaster if you lost all your fish and your tanks smashed!

thats why i would recomend keeping them downstairs

thanks

adam

 

[Lateral Line]

I had 4 x 1m tanks and a collection of small ones in an upstairs bedroom, was my breeding room. The tanks were on an overly long overly wide stand which stood on a large piece of chipboard to spread the load, against a wall across the joists.

On the other side of the hallway was the bathroom with a very large metal bathtub, which even when empty would have been heavy...

A lot of houses have wooden floors downstairs as well. I well recall my parents house having the same kind of structure downstairs as upstairs with a crawling space under the downstairs floor. Know it well as had to crawl in there on one occasion to retrieve a kitten which had blundered down there.

A lot depends on the house construction and your ambitions for the fish room.

 

[evilchild]

I had 4 x 1m tanks and a collection of small ones in an upstairs bedroom, was my breeding room. The tanks were on an overly long overly wide stand which stood on a large piece of chipboard to spread the load, against a wall across the joists.

On the other side of the hallway was the bathroom with a very large metal bathtub, which even when empty would have been heavy...

A lot of houses have wooden floors downstairs as well. I well recall my parents house having the same kind of structure downstairs as upstairs with a crawling space under the downstairs floor. Know it well as had to crawl in there on one occasion to retrieve a kitten which had blundered down there.

A lot depends on the house construction and your ambitions for the fish room.

Can you get a shed? that's what my dad did. if this is an option remember to insulate it well to keep the warmth in and cold out.

 

[sharpshark]

I wouldn't think its a problem for a modernish house at all.
1 litre of water ways a kilo, a 5ft by 2 by 2 will then probably weigh half a ton, or about seven or eight "average" people, would you have that many people in the room at once without worrying about the floor falling in? Of course you would, I would guess the big tank, the other tanks, equiptment etc would come to around the ton mark in total maybe just over, which equates to about ten or twelve people, fifteen if you want to play it safe, again no problem.

As long as you are not aware of any weaknesses in the floor, it should be fine, strengthen the beams like you said, lay 18mm ply over the floor boards silicone all the gaps and tile it so its water tight, use cabinets which have a flat base and not legs as to spread the weight a bit, and fix them to internal walls as well.

 

[Behold]

I have looked in to flooring twice now.

first is for our server room at work. we have a plastic false floor and in one point we have nearly 1.3 tons over .5m2......... We laid out a steel plate about 2m2 to spread the load.

Second i was thinking of a kingsize waterbed at home. I was told by many shops and builders houses are built to take alot of weight. also all water bed bases are built to spread the load.

Think about this. Do you have a bath? how much water does this hold? is it on 4 feet? or a small frame?

Here is a starting gage of how strong the floor is.

The thing is the beams should have no issues holding the weight. the boards shouldn't either but it is the one area to possible reinforce. this will also strengthen the beam as it will spread the force and cause less flex. your issue would be with small tall tanks more too as its not spreading the load. Also if you plan where the tanks are put you can place them near to structual areas of the house. (Near where structural walls are underneath.) this will cause less flex that may stress the tanks.

How many tanks are you looking at?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

hmmmm looking at the "1 big tank=15 people" side of things makes sense. I worked out weights and thought "hmm thats heavy" but didnt actually put it into real world terms

I was thinking of having 1 large FW tank, 1 decent sized SW tank and then some small nano tanks (FW/betta's). The large tank was going to go across the beams and would go against an internal supporting wall. The cabinet for it would go all the way across and be attached to 3 walls (back and both sides).

The SW tank would have to go in the same direction of the beams but would only be around a 40-50g size. There is a walk in cupboard that I might use for the nano tanks as I would be able to off them a lot more support and wont clutter the room up a lot. Looking at it maybe cutting down the 5ft to a 4ft I could put to on the interior wall which would make life easier.

My 160l is currently in my bedroom and I have had a similar sized tank in there for the last 5 years on and off with no problems. I have had a couple of slightly smaller tanks up there as well for awhile. Think I need to take a few floorboards up and have a look at the condition of the beams, etc.

 

[SkiFletch]

If you're concerned, tacking beams against those allready in-place would definitely do the trick. And since it sounds like you're handy enough to rip up a floor, something tells me you're handy enough to buy some appropriately sized timber and nail it to other timber allready in-place . Wouldn't really cost all that much, just a lot of labor in the tearing and replacing of the flooring. If you're putting the big loads perpendicular to the joists up against load-bearing walls, you shouldn't have a problem.

 

[Danno]

A lot of people say "If you live in a new house it should be fine". I find it the other way. I live in a 200 year old historic house in my town and it is built like a rock! Plaster walls, 100% wood construction (no fiber board or dry wall). Houses now are so cheesy. If you punched the wall in my house you hand would be broke, in a new house it would be the other way around. Also in older houses the rooms tend to be smaller. The smaller the rooms the more support is on the floor (usually). Also something I find interesting, if you jump up and down in new houses you can feel the vibration around 1/2 out from that house, in old houses you don't feel it at all.

 

[Tolak]

http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article28.html

 

[SkiFletch]

http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article28.html

There it is, thank's Tolak

 

[xxBarneyxx]

http/badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article28.html

Thanks a lot for that, interesting read.