Aquarium Supplies Storage Options

♦Other storage places can include mobile plastic drawer carts such as you find in office supply stores. (Pictured to the left is a  Rolling Storage Chest With Drawers sold by Stacks and Stacks.) Designate one drawer for fake foliage and another drawer for filter supplies. You'll need deep drawers for some of these items.

♦Label the outside of these drawers with the general contents topic.

♦Put dividers or smaller plastic storage baskets in the drawers to separate and hold items in an orderly manner.

♦You can keep these drawer carts in the garage or in the room where you house your aquariums. It's a bad idea to keep them anywhere but the garage or a closet if you tend to lay things in a messy manner on empty counter spaces such as their tops.

♦Laying anything heavy on top of these more inexpensive plastic drawer carts will push in the plastic top causing your top drawer to catch when it opens. One solution might be laying a board or similar sturdy sheet of material across the top to prevent this warping or buying a cart with a more solid top (or not storing anything on top of the cart). Some of these drawer carts now come with hard wood tops.

♦Another great place to store aquarium foods and medicine, which are items you want to keep handy, is in wall racks and wall shelving. Shop in home decor sections of stores (not the pet section) and home decor stores to find some beautiful and durable multi-level metal shelves. They may be labeled as kitchen racks or even plant stands or wall-mountable spice racks. Plastic shelves wipe clean easily. Wood shelves are nice too---if the items you put on them won't get them wet.

♦Ordinary stackable plastic bins also work well for storing many aquarium items. Put all foliage in one bin and all fish tank ornaments in another bin. Use them for holding extra filters, bubble stones, wands...whatever. Stack the bins on shelving. Check Wal-Mart in the kitchen organizers section; they have a nice and inexpensive Pantry Cart with these stackable bins on casters. It's perfect for holding near but neat your most frequent aquarium odds and ends. Wal-Mart also sells the stackable bins separately and in two to three sizes (also in the kitchen/plastic bin organizing section). They're white. This is good because it's usually easier to see and find your items on a light background (e.g. white) than a dark background (e.g. black).

♦Or put the bins in single rows on tilted rack multi-level shelving for better viewing. Label the fronts of the plastic containers if it's helpful to you. Keep the shelves in the garage. Pictured to above is Akro Mils Bins - Extra Large Blue Stacking Bin from Organize.com. You might find similar stackable totes in a hardware store or the hardware section of stores.

♦Some popular kids organizers now (often seen at Target, Kmart) are comprised of plastic baskets set in horizontal rows of three to five on a simple frame/rack that keeps the baskets tilted forward for easy access and view. This is ideal too. The only downside is the colors are multi and  "cute" for young kids and perhaps not the home decor look you want. You might try trading out the plastic bins for ones you buy yourself in colors you like---in which case you're really then just paying for the toy organizer frame. If you're handy with a hammer and saw you could probably buy a few pieces of wood from your local home building supercenter and build yourself a "tilt rack" to hold plastic bins you purchase yourself.

♦Of course, whichever makeshift organizers you use to organize and store aquarium supplies, if you store them in a garage or closet, cluster all of the aquarium items in their own section (not mixed in with the gardening supplies and sports equipment).

♦And if you are looking for an aquarium stand, perhaps with storage too, don't forget to visit eBay. This link will take you right to aquarium stands