Fish Tank Safety, Large tanks are very heavy, should reinforce wood floors

Fish tank safety,

Fish Tank safety is important when dealing with where to put larger tanks because of thier weight.

I thought I would give you some free advice on what not to do when installing your fish tank.

Fish tanks

Fish tanks are beautiful and so relaxing to sit back and watch the fish swim around. Thats why many people want a large tank for a better experience.

Fish Tank Safety

However, the larger the tank the more weight it will be when filled. An example would be a 225-gallon tank with water, fish, rocks, and accessories can weigh more than 2,100 lbs.

This is where I am going with this, if you have wood floors you need to consider reinforcing them , before placing tank in position, to avoid buckling.

I do not recommend installing on wood floors upstairs. If you are installing a small tank, 10 gallons or less this may not apply to you.

If you live in a mobile home, reinforce floors before the tank is in place.

A word of caution if you live in an older mobile home I don’t recommend a large tank. Here is my reason, most of the older mobile homes have pressed wood floors. If the tank gets a leak, the wood will crumble

and collapse, damaging the tank and you will lose your fish. If you are home at the time and spot the leak you may get lucky if you move fast.

What happens

After many years owning a water and smoke damage restoration service (retired) we had our share of major claims involving fish tank leaks. Some involved wood floors buckling from the extreme weight.

Certainly, one of the worst involving fish tanks., was a small room with wood floors. In the room they had three 225-gallon tanks and one small tank. All the large tanks were close together on one side of the room. Because there was over 6,000lb, sitting on the floor. The floor buckled under this extreme weight causing one tank to fall over damaging the tank. Not only did this flood the house, unfortunately some of the fish did not make it. As this was not bad enough, the remaining tanks had to be removed from the room, because of floor repairs. the remaining tanks had to be emptied and moved. Then it was necessary to temporarily combine all the fish into one tank with other fish who did not like each other. Because of the fall, the one tank was damaged beyond repair.