The idea behind floor support and aquariums, or anything for that matter that your floor has to support, relates to displacement not gross collapse. The floor is designed to hold a certain amount of weight while not deforming enough to cause issues like floor warping or cracking tiles. The actual amount required to cause the floor to completely collapse would be significantly higher. It's actually so much higher it makes it pretty much impossible to do, even with very large aquariums. Even if you did manage to produce enough load to cause collapse the warning signs would be obvious enough to make you stop before causing joists to shear or buckle. In other words it would take a very "special" person to actually put a tank through the floor.
This of course doesn't mean you can install as big of a tank as you want without worrying about it. You simply just need to realize that your goal is to prevent displacement and not gross collapse. As Myka mentioned as well it's not as simple as just sticking support posts under the tank either. Posts need to be installed over piles, point loading a 2-3" slab will really do nothing except cause it to crack if it actually takes any load.
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04-01-2013, 03:16 PM
Thanks for the chuckle.
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