Whoops!

[radiata]

I really dodged a bullet this afternoon. A had 45 year old angle iron stand self destruct on me. Rust will do that, in spite of several coats of Fletco Ferrothane I gave it when I bought it. It was holding an empty 65 Gallon tank, that is teetering at the mommment. The tank looks OK, but I have to remove a 3" DSB before I try to move it. I was standing about a foot away when it went. I think I lost two glass tanks that were on the shelf under it.

What I really have to worry about now in my 90G, and its angle iron stand which I bought at the same time as the above. It's currently an observation tank holding a PBT, a Purple Tang, a Moorish Idol and a Red Sea Regal.

Wish me luck...

 

[myrjon]

hope all is good bob. get some 2*4's.

 

[Mark_C]

Wow. Best of luck.

 

[radiata]

I got the sand out and got the tank on the floor. I don't believe how many pieces the stand broke into. Likewise, I'm also amazed that the 20G high O'Dell tank beneath the 65 survived intact. It is also 45 years old. They don't make tanks like O'Dell used to!

FWIW, here's a brief history of the 90 and 65 (both O'Dell). Both had what I have to call Under-Sand filtration (vs. UG Under-Gravel). PVC fittings held up eggcrate. Blue Marineland Bonded Filter Padding went over the eggcrate, and sand went over the padding. I put hollow columns, made of acrylic, that ran from the tank bottom to the top, so I could run the filtration with a pump. I could also run it in reverse flow if I wanted to play with it.

Then I had a rather large Spiney Lobster in one of the tanks. (It was large enough to have its antenna poke out of the water when it was on the bottom.) It loved to sift through the sand searching for bristle worms. It also managed to tear up the blue filter padding. So off it went to the public aquarium in Coney Island.

When I moved to NJ, I redid the tanks by covering the blue padding with plastic window screening and sealing the edges of the screen/padding to the tanks sides with silicone.

Then came along the Jaubert Plenum craze. I stopped running water out of the column of the 65. The tank water turned milky white for a few days due to a bacterial bloom. It cleared up pretty quickly.