Moving stand!! Help

Hi,

My stand which was not meant to support my tank – made with MDF is about to collapse. So I had one made proper which will be delivered in few days.

My questions is, since I cannot move my DT full of salt water, how long can my corals inside be without water? My DT is mainly Zoas, Christmas coral, acans, mushrooms, elegance, frogspawn and button coral – and few fishes too…

I was planning to remove most of the water, leaving like 3 inches of it, and move the DT to the new stand. Not sure how long this operation will take though..

Would appreciate your advises.

Many thanks.

 

Moving a tank with sand and water will damage the seals , I know this from experience.

If its a simple slide over to the new stand then it would be okay.

Don't carry the tank.

 

Thanks Jason,

Sliding it over the new stand will not be that easy since my tank is a 120gls, so need a lot of manpower to move it even if I remove most of the water..

 

other thing to consider is the fact that you probably have at least 50-75lbs of rock in the tank. hopefully upwards of 100+, not to mention, the sand, and whatever weight 3" would equal out to. Personally, i wouldn't do that... as mentioned added weight and movement of the tank can "EASILY" break the seals. Sure, you may make it and be all good... until you come home a week later to a floor reef... Not good. Buy a bunch of 5 gallon buckets, and a couple rubbermaids; just keep in mind rubber maids will bow under the pressure of water and be stupid heavy and impossible to move full. If you have large 5-6"+ fish i would setup a mini tank for them in a rubbermaid, just make sure it's out of the way and you won't have to move it once you fill it since well it'll be heavy! pull out your rockwork, place in buckets with water and make sure they're submerged. Do this with all your rockwork. If you still have water left, either another good sized rubbermaid simply because of the size and again if you don't have to move it great! Probably wouldn't hurt to do a 25% water change while you're at this just because... Siphon out all the water down to the sand bed. If you have a deep sand bed then that could be a problem. Use your own judgment but my rule of thumb is it should be fairly easy to lift, comparable to when it was empty; if you didn't move your tank this may be difficult. However, i'd think 2 guys should be able to handle a tank that size. If you can... assuming you're setting up the tank in the same spot... I would try to slide the existing tank/stand out just far enough to fit your new one in and then as mentioned earlier, just slide it over to the new one. Shouldn't be too bad if they're the same height and all... if they're not well.. you'll still have to pick it up as carefully and level as possible...

 

Good luck! let us know how it goes

 

Use a jack to lift up then slide tank under and lower. Easy as pie

 

Epsilon / Jason,

Thank you for your advises. I changed my stand one week back and it looks good without too many casualties. Lost few tube worms, brains and my black tang L in the process but the rest of my LS are fine.

I really wanted to remove as little things as possible, but ultimately I finished by removing everything and leaving just the DSB. Good I was prepared for this with lots of containers and extra salt water.

I could not slide it to the new stand since I wanted it 5 inches higher, so with 3 friends we carried it over the new stand.

First picture below the old stand and after the new one with the remaining of my LS.

Thanks again.