Moving across the country.... How?

It looks like I'll be moving from Wisconsin to Florida just after the new year. Question being, has anyone moved with their tanks for a distance, and if so, how? I've got a 55 (fresh, large oscar), 40 breader (fresh, cichlids), 20 (reef), 10 (FOWLR) that I'm going to need to move. The actual move is going to take place over three days. I'm not quite sure how to pack this up. I've thought about shipping them overnight to FL, but don't have a place to ship them to.

Options?

Taking them with me or shipping them?

Pro/Con?

 

I moved my old Cichlid tank and Red Bellied Pacu tank a few year back from Texas to Alabama. How I did it was get a few orange buckets from home depot with lids. Then I bought a power inverter for your car with 2 ac plugs on it. I believe its 400 watts, and I use it all the time now. I drilled the lids of the buckets with 2 small holes, about 1/4th each inch to snugly fit airline tubing through.. One was for air going into an airstone from my single air pump which I had Teed off to multiple lines to go to all my buckets and the other hole is to put about a 6 inch piece of airline through to prevent splashing that you will get from driving. When I began my move I didn't turn off my truck for more than 15 minutes the entire trip to keep AC on to prevent the temperature inside my buckets to change until I got to my location. My trip took 14 hours and all of my fish survived. Oh another thing I did was perform a 30% water change the night before I put the fish in the buckets so that they had clean water for the trip. Also I used bio-wheel filters at the time and to prevent them from losing their bacteria I placed each one in an individual zip loc bag full of its tank water so when you set it all back up all you need to to is set your filter up, pour the water from your bucket back in the tank, make some new water for the tank to make it full and everything is set to go.. It works like a charm. Hope this helps!

 

You may want to just consider selling your setups, or at least your livestock and then start over when you get to your new place. I can't imagine moving that far and having to worry about your fish. IMO, you would have much better peace of mind and you will be able to focus on other aspects of the move.

 

This is also very good advice.

 

This is what i'm considering for the next time we move since it was a PITA just to move 3 10 gallon tanks 15 miles. Just sell the livestock, set the tanks back up when you get there and start stocking again. The only thing I would keep is rare corals.

 

thanks for the advise everyone. Never thought of the 5 gal buckets. That's a good idea. Wonder if I would be better off to put three pails inside of the large totes to keep everything together. Mayber even some A/B foam to keep the heat in check (moving in WI during January is going to be fun).

Selling stuff.... well, my original setup was nearing 500 gallons, so I've sold off quite a bit already. This is the stuff I'd really like to keep. There's a few items like my reef and my large oscar that I'd never consider selling, either too much money or time invested into them.

 

I would suggest bagging them up , I would have your LFS do it a good seal on the big bags can be tricky . my old LFS used to have Co2 to put in the bags for aiding in long trips. After styrofoam boxes and they will be good for a fewdays in the car .
Same way they ship em internationaly

 

very very good idea