Levelling 150 gallon tank

Hey everyone. Hopefully this is the right place to post!

I finally upgraded my 55 gallon to a 150 gallon. The trouble is that I realized after taking out the carpet in the basement that the floor is quite unlevel all around the edges of the basement.

I have moved the stand and big tank to as far out from the wall as I can, but there is still about a 1/2inch gap. My boyfriend said, after we did some research, that we should apply a 1/2inch strip of wood between the floor and stand (on the front), and then use wood shims on the side.

It seems like a decent enough idea, but I have a terrible vision of my tank exploding from stress.

Could anybody offer any advice?

Thanks so much.

 

I have used shims on larger tanks without problems. Use might try a less compressible shI'm than wood, perhaps, depending on your stand type.
On metal stands (the really ugly ones , I use coins rather than wood; on the other hand, wood shims on a wood stand does seem to make sense.
If you are really worried about it, after levelling the tank, you might monitor it during the fill to make sure that the level is maintained.--------------rick

 

If you can do those things & put a level on it - then fill it with water & check it with the level again before cycling and adding fish - you would be safe.
Congratulations on the upgrade - I know you will enjoy it immensely!

 

I just wanted to say...Welcome to FishLore!

 

I'd feel more at ease using rubber strips. That way the weight of the tank filled will be evenly distributed across the entire tank. If you do use wood shims make sure all of the legs bearing weight are being used, including the inner legs.

You could use those thick round pads at wal-mart, stack 2 of them per weight bearing leg and trim away the pad that sticks out. From an engineering standpoint you won't get even distribution of the weight using shims. Shims are more for 'squaring' things from my understanding.

 

Thanks so much everybody! You guys certainly put my mind a bit more at ease.

We are going to go with the wood shims, and we will be monitoring it as we add water like some of you suggested!

Thanks for the welcome. I actually would love to be apart of the regular forums because I love aquariums and have been doing small ones since I finished high school, haha.

 

We would love to have you as an active member

 

Okay, so I thought I would post an update and ask one more question.




Here is the shimming job we did. That's the side. Along the front is just a solid bar of hard wood.

The tank was perfectly level throughout the whole process, including after adding water. So I feel pretty safe with it!

Here is the tank now set up if you guys are interested!





My question is this: how long should we leave the tank before adding some new fish? We used all the gravel from the old tank (plus 3 new bags), all old plants, and old filter media in the new canister filter.

Thanks again!!!

 

Great job!
Was the filter media moved right from the old to the new, or was it sitting dry for any period of time? if it was switched right over, you could probably add a few fish now. I would not add too many all at once, but the bacteria is already established.

 

We used all the old water and also had the old filter running on the side of the new tank for a day. When we switched it into the new canister, it did not get dry at all.

That's exciting that we might be able to add a few fish so soon. The tank looks pretty empty with just what we had from the 55 gallon, haha.

 

If there are no fish in the tank now, you should add a couple ASAP. Since ammonia is food for the ammonia converting bacteria and nitrites are the food for the nitrite converting bacteria, without an ammonia source the bacteria will starve off.

 

There are about 15 fish in the tank currently (tetras, and Mollys mostly). We just wanted to get some more because the tank seemed pretty empty with just them, haha.

We decided to wait though and got some live floating plants and a moss ball instead

 

Yeah, I was wondering what happened to the inhabitants of the old tank. I think waiting a little while is a good idea, but you shouldn't need to wait longer than about a week I would think.