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Tank level/shim

DHyslop

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Dec 22, 2004
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Hello everyone

I'm now reaching equilibrium in my new Rhode Island home. The place we are renting is a lovely candidate for "This Old House." What I mean is, although it is a very beautiful old place, the floors and the walls are no longer square.

The place where I was hoping to set up the 75 gallon octo tank has a little bit of an inward slope from the wall, 3/8" over 16". That comes out to be about 1.34 degrees. I do not know how significant this is.

Assuming that this is too much, would the best procedure be to get some wooden shims from the hardware store, level the stand, fill the tank, adjust the level, trim off the protruding part of the shims?

Does anyone have any experience? I expect most tanks aren't perfectly level.

Dan
 
More info required: are your floors wood? is it a second story, or a first?

In most cases, you will need to level the stand, and put a 1/2" thick piece of rigid styrofoam under the tank, slightly larger than the tank. Fill the tank, then wait a day. trim off excess foam with a utility knife or a razor. The foam will take up any of the slack "off level" created by the floor. For the leveling of the stand, you could use wooden shims (about a buck at Home Depot or Lowes...look in the door section).
Once the tank is full, do not attempt to change it's level...you can cause a binding failure quite easily !!!!

The reason I ask about which floor story this is on: first floors are typically either slab or heavy stringer (12" centers) supported...whilst seconds can be up to 18-24" stringer supported, making the floor possible to fail under such a heavy load...

greg
 
We're on the first floor of the building (although there is a basement below). The floor has a lovely gray berber carpet.

Is the 1/2" foam you recommend the pink polystyrene insulation sheets? And this should go between the tank and the stand? How much will the foam crush--ie, what should I expect the final thickness to be?

Thanks so much!

Dan
 
I have the same problem. When I figure out I couldn’t set up a new 250 gallon I was kind of disappointed. Knowing that the tank is massive! Ill have to wait till the addition to my house is done then I can cover it with fish tanks! :twisted:
 
Nancy said:
What's a binding failure, Greg? A failure at the seams?

Nancy


Yes, it is when the glass has curved away from the resistance of the silicone due to pressure so much that it fails, and since it is a single piece of glass (which is still malleable, in its own odd right), it gives way, or "unbinds", resulting in a torrent of water...
Not fun !!!
 
DHyslop said:
We're on the first floor of the building (although there is a basement below). The floor has a lovely gray berber carpet.

Is the 1/2" foam you recommend the pink polystyrene insulation sheets? And this should go between the tank and the stand? How much will the foam crush--ie, what should I expect the final thickness to be?

Thanks so much!

Dan


No !!!!! see this link:
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-m/moa/docs/sa0896.htm

Use white styrofoam...it should be available from Home Despot or Lowe's near their roofing aisle. It is nontoxic for the most part.
The "crush" of the foam will be about 1/4", so there will be a white band visible...some stands have trim already in place to hide this, if yours doesn't, pick up some door casing/molding while you are at the home center to place around the bottom of the tank, so it all looks good...don't want to detract from the octo tank !!!!

greg
 
So I want to use the white expanded (beaded) foam and not the extruded stuff.

Thanks so much! This is very good news, I was kind of worried the floor might be a show-stopper.

Dan
 
Follow up...RO v DI

OK, so I'm finally getting ready to set the 75 back up. I find a place up the interstate a bit that sells RO water for .65/gallon. Wow! That's twice what it sold for in WI. To be honest, I'm not in any big hurry to pay $60 just for water. Even being the tender young age of 24, I can remember when gasoline cost that.

I've thus been looking into DI/RO systems. It appears that RO is considerably more rigorous filtration. DI, consquently, is cheaper. It occurs to me that when I had the tank set up before, I used DI water exclusively because I had a free source of it. It also occurs to me that the octo I had in there lived for under a week.

So the bottom line is, to what degree is RO preferred over plain DI? I can get loads of oceanwater free, but from what I gather I would want to run that through a diatom filter or something to really purify that, probably losing any cost savings.

Any hints?

Dan
 
Although it's better to use RO/DI water, some of our octo keepers have used RO water. RO does seem to be more important than DI, but I've always used the full RO/DI and that's what many LFSs sell as fresh water.

I believe someone located RO/DI water at Walmart (more than a year ago) and I've seen it sold at better grocery stores where you fill your own bottles. I think it's less than 40 cents/gallon at the grocery stores.

Nancy
 
There are also a number of new 100g/day RO units that are marketed towards home water purification on eBay for considerably less than even the 15g/day units I see for aquarium keepers. I'm hesitant to buy anything without knowing something about the manufacturer, particularly if it is considerably cheaper. I might look into a grocery store for now because I just want to get this done.

Dan
 
Well, I ended up at Walmart last night for the first batch (45g) of water, which I still have mixing in two 30-gallon rubbermaid tubs. The Culligan propoganda at the store said the water is run through a charcoal filter, RO membrane and then UV sterilized. The inspection sheet hadn't been signed for 6 months (yay walmart!). But the price was right at 33 cents per gallon.

I did a copper test this morning. I'm frustrated because my copper test--which I otherwise very much like--does not have a zero color, only .05 mg/L. Fortunately the color of the water indicated less than this, but I'm still uncertain about a) the test's threshold for copper detection below .05 mg/L and b) the octo's threshold for copper detection.

Dan
 

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