Phase 2 Aquarium Racks
Phase 2
(This page was originally written in January, 2006.)
The second phase of rack construction began on December 10, 2005. The first phase was complete. Fish were thriving and a few pairs had produced spawns. Phase 2 is a rack of ten gallon tanks that will be used for rearing fry, and a shelf for holding 2.5 gallon betta tanks and betta jars.
When I design a rack the first thing that I do is carefully measure the space in which I have to put it when it is done. This rack is going onto the North wall next to the Phase 1 rack of 40 Br tanks. The North wall has the main water valve for the house as an obstacle. The distance between the front of the 40 Br rack and the water pipes is seven feet. The height of the ceiling is 92″. I cannot span the entire 7′ distance with rack because this new rack will extend in front of the 40 Br rack. I plan to set the ten gallon tanks sideways on the rack to that I can get more of them in the linear space, but this means that the front of the rack will be 24″ from the wall behind it. I need to be able to easily get into the 40 Br on the West wall rack, so I need to leave at least two feet of space between the two racks.
The new rack will be 55″ long, which will allow me to place five ten gallon tanks on each shelf. There will be three shleves for tens, making room for fifteen tanks total. The betta shelf will have a row of 2.5 gallon tanks (five of them) to house my male breeder and show bettas. The space on the shelf behind the 2.5 gallon tanks will be used for betta jars. I think that about 40 jars will fit behind the tanks.
The most important factor in designing a rack for my personal use is the amount of space above the tanks. I am a big guy. I need lots of room to get my arms over the tanks. When I first envisioned this rack I wanted four rows of ten gallon tanks. There is not enough space, however, to get four rows on the rack and leave enough room (at least 6 inches) over each tank. That is why there will be a betta shelf that is not as tall as the other shelves.
Here are the plans I drew for this rack. The purpose of these plans is to determine the lengths of the pieces of wood and the positions of the shelves on the vertical supports. The drawing does not look exactly like the finished rack does.
When I draw plans and try to determine space, I keep in mind the ‘hard and fast’ numbers that will not change: the height of the ceiling, the thickness of the wood and the height of the tanks. The other dimentions are ‘negotiable’. I can use fewer tanks and make the rack shorter in length. I can turn the tanks 90 degrees and change the distance from the wall to the front of the rack. I can vary the distance between the shelves and change the height of the rack. The wood, tanks and distance between floor and ceiling, however, cannot be changed.
The first thing I do is measure the distance from floor to ceiling. In this case that distance is 92″. Three shelves made from 2×4 will have 8.25″ of wood for the shelves. A ten gallon tank is 12″ tall, so three rows will take up 36″ of space. That means that 44.25″ of the 92″ I have to work with are taken up. That leaves me with a lot of space, and I tried to put in a fourth row of tens. That would add 12″ for the tank and another 2.75″ for the wood (14.75″ more) for a total now of 59″. 92″ - 59″ = 32″ Out of the remaining 32″ I need to account for distance off the floor for the bottom shelf, and my lowest limit is 10″ from the bottom of the bottom tank to the floor. I have already accounted for the thickness of the wood, so I need to subtract 7.25″ for the space under the bottom shelf. That leaves me with about 25″ for space above each tank. 25″ / four rows = 6.2″ above each tank… just enough space for big ol’ me. Alas… the bottom of the tanks on the top tank were going to bee too high for my preference… so one row had to go. I compromised with myslf and added a 12″ shelf for the bettas.
I planned for construction better this go around. I repeated the cut - template - cut system that I used in Phase 1 because it makes the measuring and cutting go a lot faster. This time I painted all the pieces of wood before construction. That saved a lot of hassle later.
The method of construction for this rack is different than that for the long rack in Phase 1. For this rack I used the ‘frame box’ method in which the shelves upon which the tanks will rest are built first, then the legs are attached to the frames. The first task is to screw the horizontal pieces together. I used 3″ wood screws to attach the pieces; two screws per joint, and I also used a little wood glue. The use of clamps makes the job a lot easier, especially if you are doing it by yourself (I really need to find some friends).
Once the shelf frames are built the vertical supports can be attached. Up to this point I have not drilled any bolt holes. One of the mistakes I made in Phase 1 was drilling the holes too early in the project. This time I used clamps to hold the vertical supports on the frames where I wanted them, then drilled both the support and the frame at the same time. I bolted the joints together immediately after the holes were drilled with 3.5″ 5/16 bolts with washers.
I also positioned the vertical supports on the rack differently than I did in phase one. The size of the rack allowed me to place the front vertical support on the side of the frames instead of the front. The rear supports I placed on the back of the frame. There is actually a reason for this.
If you look carefully in the photo you will notice that there are shims under the front legs. This rack is level… the floor is not. One of the things that I do not like about multiple-tank racks is that when they are full of water they tend to sway. That makes me really nervous. I anchor my tank racks to the wall. I use wall anchors that require a hole to be drilled into the cement wall of the room. An anchor insert is place din the hole, then a large lag screw with a hook or eye is screwed into the anchor. As the screw goes in the anchor is forced to expand in the hole, wedging it and the screw in the wall. The reason that I put the rear vertical supports on the back of the rack was to have a place to attach the rack to the wall anchor. I drilled holes in the rear supports throug which I placed a hook-head bolt. The hook bolt and wall anchor are connected through a turnbuckle. A turnbuckle is a piece of hardware that will shorten or lengthen as the buckle is turned around the screws in the piece of hardware. By tightening (shortening) the turnbuckle I anchor the rack to the wall. I leveled the rack with the turnbuckle. This was possible only because the rack leaned forward. Tightening the turnbuckle pulled the rack to vertical, leaving space under the front vertical supports. I filled the space with shims, then loosened the turnbuckle slightly. The rack remained level on the shims.
To finish off the rack I decided to top each shelf with a layer 3/8″ plywood. Except for the betta jar shelf there is no structural reason for the plywood, but it makes sliding tens in and out easier if I need to.
The plywood also provides a support from which I could hang the lights. I used a flat-head screw to hang the lights. I drilled a hole in the correct location through the plywood and inserted the screw from the top. When I tightened the nut under the plywood I could apply pressure until the screw head was pulled flush with the plywood. The light fixture’s hooks are threaded through a chain link that I set around the screw between the nut and the plywood.
I hung the light fixtures in the front half of each shelf. This way the lights will shine from the front towards the back.
The top, third (from the top) and the bottom shelves were designed to hold ten gallon tanks. The tanks are lined up with the narrow end out to make maximum use of space. So far I have only put tanks on the third shelf. It is not a good idea to make a rack top-heavy, so I did not put tanks on the top shelf first. I plan to purchase ten gallon tanks five at a time as I need them. The first five have been running two weeks, and I already need more!
UPDATE: January 2008
This rack has been running for two years now. The only major change from the plan is that the betta bowls are long gone. After a couple spawns of Betta splendens I decided that keeping up with 50+ betta jars was too much trouble. Now there are nine 2.5 gallon tanks faced end-out on the short shelf. I use thes tanks for hatch eggs and.or raising out small numbers of fry. Here is a picture of what the rack looks like now.
