earthquake protection

FernanQ

New member
I just thought, If one of those strong earthquakes hit ...would my tank fall? it's a 55 gallon. For all you from the west coast like myself.... has anyone protected their tank in some way against earthquakes? I'm thinking maybe securing somehow to the wall..??
 
I overbuilt my stand, and bought an acrylic tank. My stand has a much wider footprint than my tank, to make it harder to tip over.

Nevertheless, anytime the ground shakes, my first thoughts are of my tank.
 
been thinking about this one too. i'm not worried about it tipping over, i'm worried about up/down/back/forth jarring motion.

maybe us west coasters need to build our stands on rollers, like they build sky scrapers.
 
There are furniture anchors that can be use. They consist of a piece plastic or wood connected to a cord, and another piece of plastic or wood. You can use one or two on your tank stand. The piece of plastic/wood would go inside the stand, you then drill a hole through the wood stand and run the cord out. The opposite end would be placed inside the wall to the rear of the stand. They can't be used on the tank, but if you use one on the stand, and then set up a similar thing for the tank using industrial velcro (available at Home Depot) you can "jerry rig" a similar design for the tank itself. I think this would work well on a 5.0 quake, but having been on the 27th floor of a building for the '89 Loma Prieta 7.1 quake, I don't think there is much that can be done to protect your tank from a serious quake.
 
Another central coaster here.
Yeah, this was a big issue for me. I have a 225 Gal on a 44" stand. I used a steel stand with corner bracing. That was good for the racking, but my greater concern was overturning. To help in this area I added two steel staps that were bolted into the wall. The dead weight of the full tank also helps if the stand is solid.
 
Keep em coming. Maybe we have a engineer lurking?


I think one obvious component is an acrylic tank........
 
What I'm afraid of is the tank sliding off the stand, it just sits on the stand edge to edge and has no space to slide without falling. I don't think it would tip over, but who knows. I guess a way to secure the tank would be to build a wooden "ring" around the base and secure it to something.
 
Well I guess that to hold the hundreds of pounds of force the wood would have to be pretty thick...I really don't know. I guess it would have to be one of those monster quakes to knock it down as it is. Yes...I think I'm starting to wish for an acrylic tank.
 
if the magnitude of the earthquake is high enough, even your stand will fall apart by the weight of your tank moving back and forth or if mounted to the wall, your wall may break apart..so the outcome is not really much you can do if its bad enough. With typical tanks being at least 2 feet off the ground means high center of gravity...gonna fall or break apart when earthquake rattles the surrounding. Lets just hope no earthquake or we screwed cause I don't think home insurance covers earthquake damage in west coast unless you buy specifically earthquake insurance for your home.
 
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