Phase 3 Aquarium Racks
Phase 3
(This page was written January, 2008.)
The aquarium racks described in this section were completed over an alomst two-year time span, beginning in the Winter of 2006. The cneter of the fishroom has a support pole under the central beam of the house. When I ran the electricity I placed a curcuit that went only to this area of the room. The intention was to eventually surround the pole with aquariums, but the sizes adn numbers were not known at the time. I added tanks to this section as I needed them, starting with a three-tank rack that holds a 65 extra wide, a 40Br and a 23 gallon custom-built aquarium (which measures 36″x12″x12″). Here is an image of the three tanks that the rack holds. The pole to the left of the tanks is that center support pole around which the Phase 3 racks are positioned.
I used the frame system and made frames to fit the bottom of each tank, then attached the legs to the frames. Because the tansk were all different widths, this created a stair-step rack, and needed more than four legs. There has to be a leg on each tank corner. This is a bit more complex to plan. Here is an image of the drawing.
The finished product look great and functions well in the center of the room. I like the stair-step because it lets me use less space between the tanks. The only negative is that the top tank sits back from the front of the rack by 12″, which makes cleaning it aukward. Here are some views of the finished rack.
The next set of racks that I set up around the center pole were two racks that each hold three 20long aquariums. These racks are also frame system racks. What I did differently was to physically attache the back of the racks to the side of the stair-step rack that was already in place. This proved to be a good anchor. Once these two racks were in place one half of the space around the center support pole was filled.
About the time that I had those tanks up an running I started to get much more serious about photography. I decided that I needed a rack of tanks dedicated to taking pictures. This photo rack was to hold tanks ranging in size from 2.5 gallons up to 10 gallons, all faced out, and lit by bright lights for photography. I have just gotten back from a trip where I visited a fishroom with an interesting rack system, so I made the rack using this new method.
The photo rack is basically three 2×12 shelfs supported on either end by 2×12 legs. The entire structure is given rigidity by a diagonal support across the back of the rack. This was not a hard rack to build, but it was relatively expensive because of the cost fo the 2/12 lumber. The shelves also bow a bit too much. Hinndsight is 20/20… I do nto like this rack. I also do nto use it very much for photography, and it has reverted to a fry rack. The plan now is to replace it with another rack like the Phase 2 rack for several fifteen ten gallon tanks.
The last rack in phase three has three 23 gallon custom tanks (36″x12″x12″) and is positioned next to the rack of 20L tanks facing the stairway out of the room. The left end of the photo tank rack is against the back of this last rack. There is no rack like it on the opposite end of the Phase 3 section, because I need to be able to get in behind the tanks work with air and electricity.
Right now the Phase 3 section is an island of aquariums in the center of the fishroom. There is a total of 367 gallons of water in 21 tanks ranging from 2.5 gallons up to the 65 extra wide 9the largest aquarium in the room). That will change to 467 gallons in 27 tanks when I replace the photo rack with another rack of 10 gallon tanks.
