Depending on what the tank has in it, I see it also tearing up the substrate and any well-developed layering, with potential release of nitrates [?], and uprooting plants. And what if your resin tiki head topples?
Better than a hovercraft and not so noisy: lift it with a balloon. A zeppelin would be spectacular and manoeuvrable.
It used to be easy to make a wheeled aquarium cart, just go back to the 80s and find a disk drive cabinet being thrown away. Those drives combined with power supplies and control circuits might weigh nearly 200 lbs. They also might have additional ballast because the whole cabinet could shake when the heads moved fast enough. They usually don’t have wheels because of the shaking but they’ll have a heavy steel plate on the bottom you can attach casters to. They won’t have any top, that’s where the disk drive was, so just get a couple of boards for that, some decent hardwood over an inch thick will do. They’ll have plenty of room inside for filters and other gear. I had a couple of my tanks on those and sold them when we moved. The buyers became more interested in the carts than the tanks. I still have one of those carts in the basement that I used for a rolling workbench.
Racks like that costing less than $1000 don’t look like they could take the weight, those old disk drives cabinets were built heavier than standard computer racks. Something like this DeWalt planer cart might do if you bolted plywood to the sides to reinforce it. It’s not just a matter of carrying the weight, that considerable weight will be transferred to the legs when it’s rolled and they can’t take that kind of load. The planer that mounts on that stand weighs about 100 lbs. A 35 gallon tank will weigh around 300 lbs.
Even if an aquarium cart were feasible, wouldn’t he need to break down the aquarium to get it onto the cart? So unless he’s planning multiple moves, I don’t see how a cart helps.
Unless the permanent stand is the cart.
And frankly, any other way is vastly more impractical than the already ridiculously impractical base hypothetical.
Yes but I’m assuming this guy already has a functioning aquarium not on a cart. How does he get it onto one?
You could maybe remove most of the water, and all of the fish, and then move what’s left really really slowly. But I wouldn’t want to move one with fish in it, that seems dangerous.
If the cart and the stands are close to the same height the tanks can be transferred across. He’ll remove 1/4 to 1/2 of the water which will make it lighter and keep water from splashing out, then slide the tank longwise down the stand and onto the cart. Everything will be done slowly enough that the fish won’t be bothered.
Of course at some point you just remove the water and the fish and carry the empty tank from one spot to the next. If you keep fish that’s something you’ll have to do occasionally if you want more or bigger tanks.
Speaking strictly about the casters, I purchased this set recently for my CNC mill:
Not only are they extremely beefy, but they can be raised and lowered onto a rubber pad. No worries about the object rolling around after, or the hard wheels leaving imprints in a soft surface. They can be used to level out the object as well. My mill is around 800 lbs and I can wheel it around easily.
Those are some bea-u-ti-ful castors!
Did you get the type with ratcheting height adjust? I have a set with the simple thumbscrews on a giant table saw dolly. I can’t really lower the wheels with the thumbscrews. To roll it I first have to jack up the dolly one end of the dolly and lower the wheels, then the other end. I think they’re great for something that stays off the wheels most of the time. I’d like to see how the ratcheting height works out though. I may have to rebuild that dolly to incorporate another table extension on the saw.
Do you know by “move” whether he means like “from bedroom to living room” or like from “one apartment to another 4 miles away”?
If the former, you might simply point him at this cite:
When the guy reads all the caveats that a professional company that makes these carts professionally has for their use, and sees just how beefy one in his chosen gallonage is, and how much it costs, perhaps he’ll recognize his plans are impractically silly. And not from your sayso, but from the vendor’s. He’s helped in a face-saving way and you’re part of the solution, not part of the problem. Might be a win-win.
OTOH, if the guy thinks he can move a filled aquarium between households, perhaps the nicest thing to say is “I can’t help you.” You just can’t cure stupid. Nor reason with it. It just annoys the pig.
I did not. In retrospect, I probably should have, but this isn’t something I have to move all that often. I just need the ability to move it away from the wall for occasional maintenance. I used a floor jack to take some of the load off when lowering the rubber pads. Raising the pads (i.e., lowering the wheels) is fine.
I’ll probably machine a small wrench at some point that fits into the thumbwheel detents. It’s not actually that much force; it’s just kinda awkward getting my fingers in there.
A filled 29-gallon aquarium, which many would consider medium-sized, weighs about 330 pounds.
Not the easiest thing to slide from a conventional stand onto a wheeled cart.
Maybe the guy just wants to take his fish for a walk.
Only works if the aquarium is full of eels.
The ratcheting casters haven’t been around very long. I’m not convinced the ratchets are very strong. If I still have to jack up the machine to raise it then it’s just another possible failure point.
Yeah…I have a 27 gallon tank, shaped like a cube, and it doesn’t go anywhere. When I repainted the living room in 2020 I was glad to the open wall side in the cabinet and the few inches from the wall the filter requires it to be so I could reach through an paint behind it because I couldn’t move it an inch.
IIRC from aircraft design discussions - what you need to do is put in a lattice of vertical baffles to turn it into a hundred tiny silos of water. The smallish openings between each cell of the lattice would reduce sloshing by slowing the liquid. (Sort of like those cardboard spacers to put a dozen wine bottles in a cardboard box.)
(Reducing fuel tank sloshing is kind of important when you are maneuvering an aircraft)
So basically, when it’s time to move, you drop these baffles vertically into the tank, probably trapping the fish in several separate silos, then move, then remove the baffles. Probably not the sort of exercise you want to do every day, but an option when called for.
Or just open-cell foam. That’s what race cars use for their “fuel cells”.
I’m pretty sure you’re kidding but for the OP’s benefit, I’ll bite. My race car has closed cell foam to prevent fuel from moving away from the pickup in corners. It works really well but the OP better have really small fish if they are going to fit between the cells of the foam. I also don’t know what might leech out of the foam if it sat in water. I wouldn’t want my hypothetical pet fish to soak in it.