BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Fish Aquarium Cross Bracing

I've 2 F8 Puffers in a 40gallon tank.

I want to put my Penguin 350 on it.

There is this plastic cross brace in the middle and no decent size filter will fit on it. Right now I have three smaller filters.

Can I cut it off? Or will this significantly weaken the tank.

The tank dimensions are 36x12x20, lxwxh.

Thanks for the input

I assume you have an acrylic tank? I woudn't cut it. I had a 30 gallon tank from Sea Clear that could accept an Emperor 400 with slight modifications to the filter. How large is the cutout in your tank for the hangon filter? I'd widen that cutout instead of cutting the crossbrace.

My Tank is glass. The Cut out would need to be widened by 3-4 inches. I might have ago at that. I am moving this weekend so I will be tearing down the tank anyway. I have 3 smaller HOBs on there right now I could just stick with that. Just too many plugs. LOL

Thanks

Ok I thought you had an acrylic tank. I'm not familiar with the way your glass tank's top is configured so I really can't make any suggestions, but for glass tanks the braces are even more important than acrylic tanks so I definitely would not tamper with the brace. Glass is not very flexible so it will crack easily when there is strong uneven pressure on it. Just a simple example but if you lay a flat piece of thin glass on a flat floor and stand on the glass it will not crack. But if you put the same piece of glass on your bed and stand on it, it will most likely crack.

Anyway I've never personally used any glass tanks with a cross brace. I did have many glass tanks in the past that didn't have cross braces including 40 and 50 gallon ones. With those thanks the glass canopy comes with a plastic piece that you could cut/trim to fit your filter, heater, etc. so filter size was never a problem.