Fish tank base ?

fishuz

Loman

I do not really follow your concern. Most aquariums do not have a perfectly flat bottom but rather have a piece of glass in a fframe a little bit above a frame on the edge. In that mode the center of the aquarium is never supported directly. It seems like this setup just takes that to the next level

fishuz

the base is a separate piece not attached to the tank but rather sits under it

Tommy Gun

I know sort of what you are talking about. You should be ok though since the bottom glass of a tank is highly tempered and treated in order to be able to support as much weight as it may need to, provided that the weight is correctly applied (meaning without having it beeing twisted or more weight applied to one side over another.

If you are still worried, I believe that you can find some materials that will sort of crush under the weight of the tank but support it as well. I believe many people use eggcrate for this. I did the same for my cichlid tank when I added a bunch of rocks for them and was worried about the weight of them.

fishuz

Thanks Tommy makes me feel better knowing someone eles went through the...Hmmmm is that safe question. As for the egg crate did you cut it down any or just open up the box and lay it down ( hope that made sense )

Loman

I am still not completely sure of the base you are describing but the bottom glass of the aquarium is what is carrying the weight.. It transfers that to the edge pieces of the aquarium. While I suspect we all have wondered about putting the substrate, rocks, etc. in a tank and filling it with water supported only by glass it seems to work. I would actually be concerned about the egg crate as well. If you put too much of any material it will cause the weight to not transfer to the side panel but will be carried by the points on the bottom panel that have a surplus of material under them. If that was uneven then you could put the entire weight of the system on a small point in the middle somewhere and cause a problem.

fishuz

Thanks Loman I was think that as well thats why i asked if Tommy had cut down the egg crates I'm pretty confident that the glass will support the weight of the rocks Bog wood ect that i am going to put in the tank i just measured the glass and its approx 11 millimeters thick so it should be fine

Tommy Gun

The glass will most likely be able to support anything you can fit into the tank, within reason, of course. Sometimes problems can arise though with cichlid tanks, for example, when people want to place a large rock structure in the middle of the tank. While I still believe this has been taken into account during the glass manufacturing process (glass is not as fragile as we all may think), some people prefer to gain some confidence by placing material under the glass. When I placed rocks in my tank, I did put some egg crate underneath the glass, more as a consideration for me rather than because it was 100% needed. The eggcrate is designed to spread out the weight throughout itself equally and so it would not hurt anything. A good example of this principle is the foam that many people put on their beds to help with back problems. Simply put, when you lay on it, your weight is distributed more equally and this releives stress on your back. This principle is put to use in a million places and even skyscrapers use a similar system to ensure that they do not sink into the ground. If you would like, I know that there are a lot of articles on the internet about helping to support aquarium glass and so you can just google the topic to find out more and to see how it is done (I am a visual learner, so this works best for me)