Aquarium stand

The Idea

I've always wanted a fishroom-- plenty of space for keeping and breeding as many different fish as I cared to. Reality of course has a way of keeping dreams modest, and my fishroom was no different. Apartment living doesn't really lend itself to a full-fledged fishroom, and once again compromise prevailed. So was born the aquarium rack.

The Design

Before I designed my fish rack I decided on a few things I wanted:

	Tanks "long side" out, like a normal setup. I realized that this would mean fewer aquariums, but more pleasure for me.
	Some portability-- I'm not planning on living in an apartment for the rest of my days, and I'd like to be able to take my rack with me if possible.
	Sturdiness-- I don't want to see it sagging in 6 months after the weight has been on it awhile.
	Built-in Lighting-- I wanted to use shoplights built into the stand, as the hood-and-light-strip things would have blown my budget, which brings me too
	Low Cost-- as low as possible. I'm a poor college student.

With all of these in mind, I again went to the internet to see what others had done, and came across a few sites. You can go to these from my links page.

Shoplights come in four foot lengths, so this meant the length of my racks had to be an increment of four feet. I also wanted the tanks to be uniform, to give it a nice even look. At first I was considering 10 gallons, 20 longs, and maybe 29 gallons. I eventually settled on 10 gallon tanks because of their low cost to set up and because their length lends itself to racks of four foot increment.

My first design was eight feet long for 8 ten gallons, but I later decided it would be more prudent to have a four foot rack for 4 ten gallons, as I could always build two such racks and have the same result. Its always better to start small and see what works and what doesn't, and this setup has the added benefit of being much easier to transport.

Here are the plans:

The Materials

	10 2x4
	1 sheet of plywood
	50 screws

That's all thats needed! Here are the lengths to cut the pieces:

	6 2x4's cut to 54" length (horizontal spars)
	4 2x4's cut to 54" length (vertical braces). These should have dados cut out of them at
	6 2x4's cut to 10.5" length- use the scraps from the above for these (horizontal braces)
	2 pieces of plywood that are 10.5" by 51" (first and second shelf)
	1 piece of plywood that is 10.5" by 54" (top shelf)

Once you have all the pieces cut, all that is left is to put it together!

Construction

Ok, ok, I have to come clean-- I didn't put this thing together by myself. But I could have.