I'm moving soon, thinking of plans...casters for the stand?

mcsassy

professional fool
Jan 28, 2008
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I don't know what the proper forum for this would be but I am moving in a couple weeks and there is carpeted flooring at the house and we plan on installing wood at some point, so instead of having to take the tank apart 3 times, I am thinking of installing heavy duty casters under the wood stand during the initial move so it can be wheeled around easily after that. The tank is an AGA 72 bow with AGA wood stand. 80 pounds live sand. 70 pounds live rock. 150 rated Pro Clear sump in the stand. Opinions, ideas are welcomed please! :)
 
U b crazy.

I can't see it working.

A couple of reasons:
The stand needs to be designed to resolve all its forces to where the rollers are. It likely isn't.

When you go to rollers you need to go to LARGE rollers as otherwise the floor loading is insane. Realize that ultimately you end up with all the weight on just very little narrow strips of wheel. You can end up with thousands of psi loads on the floor even if the tank doesn't weigh thousands of pounds. This can mar the flooring or cause indentations/tracks in wood.

Because of the aforementioned loading when you go to move the tank it doesn't want to move. => push harder => doesn't move => push harder yet => jerks into motion => even a half empty tank will send waves over the side.

Wheels on a tank look funky bad. They transpose the tank into a "commercial system" kind of look.
 
I think I would be too nervous to put it on wheels. Just thinking about all that weight on a bunch of wheels instead of spread out along the whole base of the stand.
 
I gotta agree that the casters are not a great idea. One, I think it would put pressure points on the stand, like kcress said. And two moving the tank full would put forces on the tank that it's not designed to take...I think it could be a disaster. The only way I think it could possibly work is a bunch of really strong casters all around the base of the stand so the weight is distributed, but I still wouldn't try it because of the moving problems.
Could you set the tank up in another room until the work is done so you wouldn't have to tear it down so many times?
Robbie
 
I totally agree. I wouldn't risk putting wheels on. Way too risky.

Maybe I am just Cautious, but I envision one of the wheels giving out and the whole tank crashing to the ground. Why risk it?
 
Ya I did think about all the pressure distribution before I posted this (I guess I should have mentioned it myself) and I was thinking of ways to evenly distribute that pressure...maybe with cross bar metal sheets or strong planks going in an x shape diagonally from one caster to the other?
 
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