making a stand
 

wondering if anyone has made a tank stand before from metal. If so what problems did you run into and what where your solutions.

I am a welder by trade and I have made a few stands for clients and the biggest thing would be to make sure it is square and level! After that you want to seal it with a primer and paint to avoid rust. Thats it.

I would recomend having it powder coated after its built. My stand is metal and after 6 months it is showing signs of rust in areas where the paint is chipped.

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...382_-_Copy.JPG

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/dat...402_-_Copy.JPG

I definitely recommend powder coating if you can afford it. Think about automobile manufacturers, they're pretty good at painting, but steel and salt water will always end up rusting.

I used industrial enamel and painted my stand myself. I'm fairly confident it will last a couple years before it starts rusting.

Good luck

Static [ reply ]
 

Looks great...job well done Static:grab:

I built my own metal stand for my 135 Gallon out of 1 inch square tubing and angle iron. Like Holywood said square and level are the key to pretty much any project. When welding metal it is always a good idea to do a tack weld and double check that everything is square before laying down the final bead of weld (with a tack weld you can always re-adjust). I painted my stand with the stone look spray paint and it has held up surprisingly well to salt water (much better than regular spray paint). One other thing that I did was lay down some thin rubber between the stand and tank to more evenly distribute the load of the tank on the stand.

Would MIG wleding work ok to put the stand together or should i use a differnet form. The stand is for a 65 gallon tank and beside it is going to be a fiberglass tank I am making it is 18x18 and 24 inches tall. so there is roughly 90 gallons of water ontop of the stand.

Water is approximately 10 lbs per gallon so 90 gallons of water will be about 900 lbs, if that's any interest to you....

Any welding process, if done properly will be adequate to hold your stand together. I personally use MIG, it's fast and relatively easy. Just make sure you're confident in what you're doing before you put 900 lbs of water on top of it.

Good luck and have fun

I built the stand for my 135 gallon (well over 1000 lbs. of load on this stand) with a small 110 volt MIG welder. I think the key is to make sure you have enough practice and skill to know that you can rely on your welds to support that kind of load.

OMG! I came into this thread expecting to hear someone rant about how they were fed up and wouldn't take it any more.........And I call myself a reefer? It didn't even click!