Second floor aquarium (Unique Situation)

[tjman84]

Hello!

I've poured over a great deal of threads from various places about the structural issues with aquariums on second floors. I'm considering a 40-50 gallon for my bedroom. The home is 1950's, solid plaster walls.

The unique thing is it's a cape cod house, with a large crawl space behind the bedroom wall that runs perpendicular to the joists. So far I can't tell if that wall is load bearing at all, because from the crawl space I see exposed joists meeting with the angled roof that goes to my back yard.

This means the crawl space is about 7 feet wide at the most and the wall may be load bearing or not. Trying to see if anyone has experience with this type of situation?

I.E. 40+ gallon properly running through across the joists rather than with just not against the wall. Technically I can put it to the corner of the room where the last joist would definitely be attached to load bearing wall, but only on the tip of the right of the aquarium etc.

 

[mr_X]

A 50 gallon is nothing to worry about, no matter where you put it.

 

[wildroseofky]

You should be fine putting along any of the walls. Even if it is not a weight bearing wall the framing should be enough to hold a lot of weight. I have three tanks, a 5, 10, and 29 gallon, along a non weight bearing wall in a 100+ year old home that started out as a hand built, harvested by hand wood cabin.