Fish tank desk,stand design

I'm planning on building a desk / work surface thing that will go across 2 walls of my room. Covering about half of each wall. The above picture is part of the desk. Want 2 tanks to go on it, 1x3ft and then a 50l tank. All others will be made from pine, with the top being 22mm and the legs 5cm x 5cm.

Now to point of post: Are the pine legs enough support or will I need steel bracing of some sort? Would like to have anything non wood pretty well hidden or at least very discrete.

What are the suggestions and past experiences of stand building?

 

So the 3ft will be on the left shelf bottom? What about he 50l ?

I you are not putting any tanks on the counter top you should be ok. If you are planning on planning on putting the tanks on the counter top - add more support to avoid wood creep. 50x50 does note leave allot of room keying the shelves in if you want them to carry any tanks. If your carpentry skills are up to it I suppose a tongue and groove, glue and screw assembly could work. If you could take the legs to 75x50 or 75x75 you will have ample strength.

Later Ferdie

 

Hi Ferdie thanks for the reply. Afraid to say both tanks will be going on top. At the moment the 50L is on a dressing table and causing no trouble. The 3ft used to be on top of a small cupboard that didn't have any legs but rather had 3 vertical dividers. I agree 50x50 is pretty small so the 75mm is definitely an option. I will try draw up some joins, just need to do some reading as to what gives the best strength.

 

Years ago I made soem pine stands for my Discus breeding cubes (each wighed in at 'bout 250kg's) used 75 x 75 legs and tongue and groove crosspieces made from 75 x 22mm pine with 16mm pine tops...each stand had 3 tanks on it... Never in their 3 years of operation before I sold them did I have any failures.... Hope this helps ease your mind...

 

@azurekoi thanks, sure does ease the mind! I weigh about 100kg and tend to end up standing on all sorts of furniture and none have broken, except for 1 chip board bed base, but that doesn't really count as real wood

Ill finish plans and then start trying to find the wood...any ideas on the best place with the best price?

 

i usually get my wood at timber city.. i find them pretty reasonable..

 

Bought some wood from them recently, to replace a bed base, were pretty reasonable! Just realised measurements in first picture are way off. Little later will post what it should actually be. But basically the above picture will now hold just the 3ft tank with a few cm to spare...

 

You could most likely get lumber from any builders or cashbuild or timber city and then sand it up for a nice finish. Just make sure it's straight.
I've seen plenty tank stands built exclusively out of wood in Europe, even some really big ones, so there shouldn't be any issues.