Moving soon...

Soo I'm moving out of my current place at the end of decemeber and will obviously be moving the tank.. since I started I've made some beginner mistakes, not using RODI for top offs and getting some bad pieces of LR. Anyway all my rock is covered in gha and no matter how pristine I keep the water now (after the fact) the gha presists.

How do you guys feel about the outcome of this scenario during the move as far as fish survival and water quality goes.

Dump all LR currently in the tank(nuke and use later) and start fresh with baserock while seting up after the move but us the original tank water, sand, and still use the refugium with its dsb and chaeto.

since its baserock(not lr) replacing my current gha infested LR should everything survive without a horrible cycle.

 

jay tropical

I dont like the sound of it to be honest
your going to be discarding all of your bacteria populated rock, and moving all your fish into a system that wont be able to process their wastes

yes there will be bacteria in the sand , but using the old water wont help much

(I would choose new water/ old rock over Old water/ new rock in terms of having adequate biological filtration capacity)

are all the old rocks covered in GHA? are some of the lower rocks, rocks to the back of the reef, pretty clean?

if your moving what you could consider is

cleaning the rocks as best as you can with a tooth brush, scouring cloth, etc in old tank water when you remove them from transport

when you set up tank in new location, ensure you have GFO in your filtration system
and try dealing with the GHA issue that way rather than risk your livestock with a complete rock change

also IMO , if you move the water, fish, corals etc , you would only be potentially introducing the GHA problem into the new set up anyway

better to get to and deal with the cause of the problem ( Phosphates/ Nitrates, lighting age etc)

Steve

 

Steve,

your right, i didnt think about how much biological filtration is within my established lr vs anything else i would be keeping during the move... maybe if my DT had a dsb id have a better chance.


im just sick and tired of this GHA, my nitrates and phosphates read zero at all times, i have the equivalent of about 20 balls of cheato ripping away at my nutrients along with mangroves. i have a 4 month old XM mh 15k bulb... my assumption is my LR has leached phosphates from my newbie acts the first half of the tanks life and now i cant seem to get it out of the rocks

 

I just recently moved and had some GHA on a couple of rocks and my sandbed. This is how I did my move.

All rock in covered bins and cover the rock completely with tank water. Next went fishing for everybody in the tank and put them into 5gal salt buckets with more tank water. Next was coral, I put them in little plastic dishes with lids. After moving to the new house and getting everything where I wanted it. I rinsed my sand with old tank water to get the dusty stuff out and to clean up some of the deatrus. I gave my rocks a good scrubbing with a hard bristle brush to get most of the gha off and then rinsed them with old tank water. I then put in the sand, rocks, aquascaped and used half old tank water with fresh mixed water. Everything turned out great and didn't lose any coral or fish. Good luck, you'll do just fine. When you move everything over maybe invest in some chaeto to keep the phos. down. since you will be scrubbing the gha off it would best to get something in the filtration to absorb the phosphates before the GHA has a chance to come back.

 

Is it possible to set up the tank in the new place a couple of weeks before moving the fish?

 

thanks for the info, and i do have a ton of chaeto, filling a 15 gallon section of my refugium. it doesnt seem to be enough.

 

not unless i got a another/new tank...

 

Steve's and Azocean's post are excellent go with their suggestions and make do with new growth. Get a couple of Emerald crabs and a good CUC to help get rid of the GHA.

 

Alright I've got this. Get a bin or multiples large enough to hold your rock and fish. Then, take a rock out one at a time and treat them and put in the new tank. Once the tank is cycled, start putting fish in and the rest of the rock still one at a time slowly to not cause another cycle. You'd still need another filter etc though, but you might be able to find something on craigslist and sell it after to get most if not all of your money back (or keep a spare).