Do It Yourself DIY Tank Stand

When making a DIY Fish Tank stand your imagination is your greatest guide. There are some engineering concepts that you do have to follow.

I built my fish tank stand off of these steps. Unfortunately I do not have pictures of the process.

Step 1 - Planning
You must make some choices here on how high you want your tank, but most of this is all based off of your tanks footprint. The idea here is to think about making 2 rectangles to fit the footprint of your stand from 2x4's. The top one holds the tank and the 2nd one is the base. So if you have a tank that is 72"x 20" (my tank as an example) you will need to have to think a 2x4 is really 1-1/2" x 3-1/2" and you will have to subtract the 1-1/2 from the side rails (how I did it) so you have 2, 72" 2x4s for the front and the back and 2 17" 2x4s for the sides. This needs to be added together and multiplied by 2 for the top and the bottom.

Strength is always good so I added 2 cross members on the top rectangle (additional 17" each) and 1 for the base.

In this example I am up to 373" long in 2x4s or about 31.1 feet of 2x4s (rounded up a to the nearest foot)

Now how high do you want it. If you want it 48" off of the ground you will have to subtract 7" (the height of a 2x4) from each one leaving you with 41" tall vertical supports. You need to have these at 18" increments (72" I need 4 supports 1 in each corner and 2 placed to the center each 18" from the corner) This would be 8 - 17" 2x4 for the vertical support to the frame.

This would add another 136" or 11.4' of 2x4s so now this project is 42.5' in 2x4's

here is a diagram kind of what I mean:


I omitted a few things in this design

I took the scraps that were left to and cut little triangle out to wedge into the corners of the top and bottom rectangular frame and a few to support the vertical corners

So you take all those dimensions and remember you need ones long enough for the front and back (my case I made sure I got 2"x4"x12') and that is the amount of 2x4 wood you will need.

So for this 4 - 2"x4"x12' will do with some left to make the corner blocks

Last part is do you want it covered? If so, with what.... I used Lanolin as it is cheaper than plywood but it is not easy to work with (splinters!!!!). I needed 1.2 sheets so I bought 2 to cover the 2 sides and the front.

I also bought a 1"x6" to hide the plastic wrapping on the aquarium (1 - 1"x6"x10') and some molding to wrap the bottom to look nice (10' of this) and I got some 1"x4" to make my door wrapper.

So my shopping list looked like this:

4 - 2"x4"x12'
1 - 1"x6"x10'
1 - 10' Molding Strip
2 - 4'x8' Lanolin Sheets
1 - 1"x4"x8'

Step 2 - Buy it
Now you know what you need as you have done all of the planning

Step 3 - Build It

Frame
Now it is a matter of assembling what you planed. I used 4" wood screws to hold the 2 x 4s into place (sometimes countersinking the screw to make sure it set in good with the 2x4 I was screwing it into.

As mentioned before I used triangle cut shaped 2x4 scraps to make corner chocks (my stand was not quite square when I finished due to cutting imperfections) These blocks squared out my frame.

Sheeting
I used 1" finishing nails and wood filler to make sure my lanolin looked good on the front and then sanded it down several times.

Doors
The doors for me were kind of tricky as I did not have a router to cut out a groove on the 1x4 door frames to put the lanolin sheet into so I made the frame and glued the lanolin behind it. This worked out well but you can see the unprofessional look if you really look that close, otherwise nobody notices

You will need your hinges and I used the spring loaded hidden hinges and then 4 knobs.

Finishing
I used mahogany stain and several coats of polyurethane clear coat (wipe on as it is REALLY easy to work with). I did this with the doors unattached to both the doors and the stand.

Then I waited a few days to dry good and finished assembling the doors.

This is what I got:
View attachment afarm4.static.flickr.com_3149_2863111180_182cb01c35.jpg

I added an area to keep a 10 gallon tank as the wife did not want tons of tanks and I know I will need it off and on so it is there but not really noticeable. It is that dark area in the middle of the stand. There was another 2x4 frame built into the main frame to hold that tank and then Lanolin cut around that. That space could have well been another set of doors or whatever you can think of.

I hope this helps and I did not get to technical flooding your mind with numbers and dimensions but that is part of woodwork and an important part as you need to get what you need, not too much and not too little.

 

This is the frame plan I was describing, maybe should have made it before submitting the post

 

Wow.... proofreading is always good..... hmmm lol

The worst part is the "d" and the "k" are on opposite ends of the keyboard....

 

An ex-girlfriend perhaps?