Depending on the size of the tank, I’d be legitimately concerned the casters would damage flooring as the tank was moved. I mean, you’re supposed to have some kind of floor protector just for office chairs, and a chair and a large man would weigh 150-250 pounds, depending on the size of the man. A mid sized aquarium could EASILY weigh two or three times that - water is over eight pounds a gallon.
Industrial grade casters, bear in mind, are usually used in a factory, and factories usually have concrete floors in the production areas. Carpeting and hardwood used in homes could get seriously fucked up moving a VERY heavy thing around on casters. Again, depends on the size of the tank.
See post #2 concerning industrial grade castors. If you clear the filter you can see that different types of flooring (such as hardwood) are taken into account when choosing a caster. Granted the cost goes way up if you want to support 500 lbs per castor on a hardwood floor.
Yeah, that would be my concern, and it’s why you need to go to a McMaster-Carr or a local industrial supply place (any city will have such a business.) I would not trust a caster sold at a Home Depot or the sales associate selling it. No offense to them but this isn’t their field.
Certainly don’t assume the caster with the highest weight loading at the Home Depot is the right one, But if they have the proper heavy duty casters you would use in this application at the big box store they are likely the very same ones available at an industrial supply.
Just because this can be done doesn’t make it a good idea. I never had to be concerned with carpeting but it was not a problem at all for hardwood floors. People forget how much they weigh and how much of that gets concentrate at the feet of furniture. Carpeting can be difficult to roll over without placing a better rolling surface to use. I wouldn’t bother with this for a single tank transfer, it’s the kind of thing you would do if you have become obsessed with aquaria and have multiple tanks of fish to deal with.
Arkansas Game and Fish has a trailer they move to different cities to show various native fishes. I’d really like to talk to them about how that works.
That is not an aquarium, its a portable transportation tank with see thru walls. The top is sealed and there is no plant life or a little sea diver involved, the bottom is flat metal. It’s like transporting your catch home live in a large igloo cooler. It’s not meant to be sustainable for long term keeping of fish.
I remember reading some years ago that the largest deposit of gold in the world is not Fort Knox but the Federal Reserve bank in New York. A lot of nations have gold deposits there so when Japan buys a shipload of wheat from Canada for umpty kilos of gold, instead of freighting it from Tokyo to Ottawa, workers merely trundle it from Japan’s niche to Canada’s in the bank.
The floors are oak and last about five years. The pulled-up planks are burned and enough gold extracted from the ashes to pay for the new floor.
I was mostly joking, but a part of me thinks it might work. You wouldn’t fill the entire tank with it, just the top half or so–the fish would stay in the bottom half. That should still be sufficient to prevent sloshing over the top. I agree about unknown chemicals leaching into the water, though it’s a pretty innocuous plastic in my experience, and you could just soak it in another tank first to get rid of any residue.
As I recall, the anti-slosh in aircraft could be baffles or in some cases something like steel wool. The steel wool (and I presume, the foam) are also functional in reducing the risk of half-empty or punctured tanks igniting from a wayward spark - something less of a worry with a water-filled aquarium.
But basically, something like baffles (or foam) reduce sloshing by severely slowing the movement of the fluid. Sloshing is due to the resonant frequency of the waves in the tank too. By reducing the frequency and the Q of the system, you reduce the risk of overflow.
A baffle or two should stop serious sloshing. There are tank dividers used to keep fish apart that should do the job. A tank shouldn’t be moved fast enough or under any conditions that would cause so much sloshing. And the sloshing is to keep water in the tank, and that can be done with a cover on the tank. The fish don’t mind, they have mad swimming skills.
There are several simple DIY solutions for this. The “why move it” aspect would answer which one of them would be practical.
If it’s for an extreme/odd application like a fast-moving sliding door to a secret door so he can sneak out of the room before the lights come back on then yes you need baffles and expensive engineering to keep the tank and table from sloshing and tearing it’s self apart from the inertia.
If it’s to move a fancy Takashi Amano-like setup occasionally across a level concrete floor to a loading dock, then build the stand around a pallet frame and use a pallet jack to raise it, and several people to slowly pull & push. You could do something similar with 1" steel stock bar as rollers; Just design the bottom of stand so it can take the stresses.
It would be smart to use a come along or chain hoist to slowly and incrementally pull in a horizontal direction rather than quickly jerking the load to get it started. I’d say the biggest challenge is controlling the pull to keep it so slow that sloshing doesn’t really happen. People get impatient and just want to apply force too fast most of the time.
I moved a 500lb load up and down a set of stairs by myself 3 weeks ago with a 1/4 sheet of plywood and 2 ratchet straps. It took all day to set up and pull off, but the load was under control the whole time and i never broke a sweat. Knowing how and why this tank is to be moved would help…
