Aquarium placement in your home
Aquarium placement in homes is important. If your home has a concrete slab floor, finding the perfect spot for a large goldfish tank or aquarium is easy, and shouldn’t cause any damage to your flooring, wherever you choose to place it, but if your home has a crawl space with wooden floor joists, the tank should be located in a manner that won’t stress the structural members or joists, which may cause sagging or worse, a collapsed floor. Locate your tank or aquarium in a position so that the load is equally distributed among floor joists as shown in the diagram below
Where to locate aquarium
Take a peek through one of your access doors to get an idea of the layout of the floor joists, trusses or wood members. Make a note of which direction these members are running or spanning. Shine a flashlight to see which walls in your home have support, such as concrete foundation walls or pillars below framed walls; these are load bearing walls which will easily carry an additional load
If the floor joists are enclosed due to a lower level below, you can use a marble or water to determine which direction the the joists are running. Over time, joists sag slightly. The direction the marble or water runs is the same direction the joists run
Aquarium placement
Place your tank or aquarium running the opposite direction of the floor joists so that the tank is sitting on several members instead of just one or two joists; this distributes the load
If you’re unsure of which walls are load bearing, then place your tank on an exterior wall. All exterior walls are load bearing
Placement of aquariums in homes
Step 1: Goldfish Housing
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Author: Brenda Rand