Can I have 75 gallon tank in an apt. I live on the 2nd floor.
YES you can. You can make it as complicated as you wish, but in the end unless you live in a 3rd world country with apartments made of paper, or you live in an old wood building eaten out by termites, it will be no problem at all. Not even if you have a standard iron stand with 4 legs. Building codes are strict in most developed countries. I currently have a 75 gallon and a 40 gallon in my 2nd floor apartment. I had the same two tanks in my 2nd floor townhouse. I had at one point a 110 gallon and the 75 gallon in that house. All basic iron stands placed directly onto the floor. Play it safe and put the tank up against a load bearing wall - this is the floors strongest point. Having too much weight on the floor will gradually bend the joists and warp the floor - which isn't good - but you do not have to worry about the tank falling through - this is something that just can't happen the way homes are built. even if Mary heard about her cousins best friends husbands sisters uncles daughter who had it happen to her.
yes you can i currently have a 125 gallon on a wooden stand and 2 30gallon on top of eachother on a medal stand with four legs. the tanks are right next to each other and have never had a problem just put it on a load bearing wall.
I am not sure. But I just wanted to add a little tidbit of info...your stand's legs are very important here. If they are narrow, then that will be a lot of pressure on four small points. If they are wide, that is much better. If your stand doesn't have legs, but just has one flat surface for the whole bottom, that is ideal. The pressure would be spread out and minimized.
A 75 gallon, filled, with a stand and all the substrate as well is going to weigh roughly 700-750 lbs. Now if your stand is a basic iron stand or metal stand, it will have 4 legs that are in contact with your floor. This divided by 4 is the approximate lbs/ per square inch of force exerted on the floor surface. Now if you have one of those wooden stands, you have a much larger surface area in contact with the floor, and thus, you have a lower lb per square inch of force on the floor. This leads me into asking, what is your floor surface? If that is a tiled floor, I highly reccomend putting a sheet of plywood down, about 1/2 to 3/4 thick to spread your surface area contact out, and thus lowering your lbs per square inch on the floor. If you have a carpeted floor, you wouldn't have to worry about the damage to the surface as much. I've asked a similar question before I set up my 180 gallon tank in the second floor. Basically, if you are concerned about structural integrity, then position your tank along a load bearing wall. A load bearing wall is any main wall in the place, such as a wall that is connected to the outside of the building. These floors carry greater ability to hold higher weights. If you are still worried about the weight, put plywood again, down under the tank stand. This will disribute the weight going across the floor surface. I have a 180 gallon tank on the second floor, going on five months now. I double sheeted the plywood and no problems at all.
