DIY Aquarium Rack

The fish tank rack above was built by myself and my mate Bart from Rainbow Aquatics, to whom I'm very thankful for the help. Without his knowledge, lend of tools and time invested it would not have happened.

A project like this can seem quite daunting the first time you undertake it. Although time consuming it was easier to construct than I would have thought and in the end it was well worth the time spent.
I will try to highlight parts of the design in this post.

The aquarium rack above is designed to support six 72 litre; 60x40x30 tanks but the same design can easily be adopted to hold a different amount of tanks at various sizes. The exact dimensions are not that important as a design for an aquarium rack varies so much depending on space available, size of tanks etc.

I hope to present a more detailed sketch of how a rack like this is constructed but at the moment my notes are a chaotic mess and it has to wait.

The key to this design is the way the joints are fitted together, below you will see some examples from my rack:

Note how the joint of the beams distribute the weight of the tanks across the rack, this structure is capable of carrying very heavy loads.

Each beam was cut by hand with a saw and each cut was leveled using an electric router, the beams were also sanded to create a smooth finish.

I choose to cover up the sides and top of the rack. This creates an insulating effect and also looks quite nice. My intent is to add a piece of styrofoam at the rear as insulation.

The openings for each tank space were also covered with a thin sheet of plywood attached to the rack with small hinges:

The rack was also wired to that each tank space has access to a four socket connection:

As a finish the rack was painted with a wood stain:

It is of importance to mark each joint when the tank is dismantled the first time as wood is changeable enough and none of the beams are exactly the same. It could easily turn into a nightmare to put it back together again unless this is done.

I also opted to install a led light strip running throughout the rack, it does not supply allot of light but it is ideal for breeding fish as it does allow you to see the fish while not disturb them too much:

I would recommend any fishkeeper with several tanks to invest the time to build something like this themselves, It has made my life much easier.

Andreas

See Rene Bannerskjolds improved version here