Location of your Tank

[Mike-fish]

one in each bedroom (29g) living room(175g will be replaced with 270g) spare room (34g) hint for any tanks in bedrooms check water levels before bed as i makes for a rather rude alarm clock

[Aquattro]

Mine is living room, top floor. I have a full length closet directly below the front and it's against a support wall at the back.

[gregzz4]

Previously we had a 125g FW with approx 175#s of gravel and 50#s of rock against an inner load-bearing wall on our second floor. The wall is constructed of 2 x 6s over a trippled 2 x 6 doorway, so it's really strong
Even with 2 x 12 floor joists we had some deflection across a 13' wide room
Now, with our 75g on that wall, and the sump equipment in the room on the other side of that wall, there is virtually no deflection at all

I had an engineer, and a contractor friend, look @ our construction
The contractor friend said you'll be fine as long as you don't have a livingroom full of friends over for a party and bouncing on the floor
The engineer said it will not pass a stress test based on his software

Lasted over a year before we sold the tank, but we could make the water move if we wanted to

Hope that's the kind of input you were looking for

[Enigma]

The 40B we're working on is going in our bedroom on the top floor of our 1960s bungalow. It will run perpendicular to the outside wall, along the wall that seperates two bedrooms. The total system will be around 55 gallons.

I'm a little concerned, but Hubby (who is a flooring contractor) scoffs at my worry. We've got the old 1.5" site finished oak floors over shiplap. The shiplap runs at 45 across the beams. There is a 16" spacing on the 2"x7" beams.

Should I worry? How much weight should the floor be able to hold?

(Shhh! Don't let him in on my little lack of faith in his assessment!)

Edit: The bedroom is where I wanted it, as it is the only room of the house I really see during the work week other than the bathroom.

Edit2: There is a wall close to being beneath the tank in the basement, but it isn't load bearing (there are no load bearing walls in the basement, other than the foundation).

[Magma]

I have a 40gal with 20gal sump in the middle of a room right now and the joists run parallel with the tank. So I wouldnt worry about a 55gal of water

So thats probably 700lbs of water weight, which is a far cry from closer to 2200lbs of water weight this new tank will have

[reefgirl189]

180 gallon in the middle of the living room. We reinforced the floor and moved the 75 gallon sump to the basement. This is an old picture but you get the idea :

[mark]

main floor, sort of in the center, 145g.

[mike31154]

77 sumpless sits on outside, southeast corner of dining room, perpendicular to floor joists. Similar to Enigma, I have an older bungalow with the shiplap subfloor at 45 degrees to the solid, monster joists. Strangely many of the joists are 2x9, but there are more than a few which measure close to 10 inches by over 2 inches thick. There's a lot to be said for homes built back when builders had access to the very best BC wood for building rather than it being shipped across the border or to Asia as is the case now.

Ultimately I'd like to have a 5 foot tank as a room divider between kitchen & dining room. I've already roughed in a fishroom in the basement where the sump will be located. One of the fishroom walls will help support the load, since this tank will run parallel to the joists. I like the idea of situating a tank so that as many sides are available for viewing as possible. After all, we're paying for 4 panes of glass in most cases so why not use them for viewing vice jamming them against a wall. It does mean having to keep more glass clean, but I think that's a minor tradeoff. My current tank is viewable from two sides only, which kind of sucks IMO. The room divider plan will provide 3 sides of viewing pleasure, one end being close to the south outside wall. Some of the nicest tanks I've seen (to me) are cubes set up with center overflow/returns that are viewable from all 4 sides.

The other thing I'd like to do while I'm setting up my room divider is include a nano for the living room. I'd run the photoperiod on that during the afternoon & evening, shutting off later at night. Photoperiod on the current system is pretty standard daytime & I'm often disappointed there's nothing to see after 19:30.