tank moving advice please

OK, due to circumstances beyond my control, I am moving to a new house about 20 minutes away. This will be the first time I have moved a tank, let alone saltwater with all the cuc, live rock, corals and last but not least the fish themselves.

Anyone have any advice?

- How to transport?
- What percent of old water and new water to put back in?
- I am guessing i should leave sand in and not disturb if possible?
- I am also thinking refuge should be treated the same as the tank when moving?
- How long will fish and corals be safe in moving containers?
- Does live rock need to be submersed in water or just kept wet and for how long will they be ok?
- etc???

I am going to do it as fast as possible but you know how nothing goes as planned.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

This is easier than it seems. So don't fret too much. It's just going to be a busy day. First of all, how big is your tank?....and do you have any other tanks available to you? 10g, 15g, etc.....

 

Is this on the 90 in your sig?
I have to do mine twice. What I did, was go and get a bunch of buckets from home depot. Use the buckets to store as much water as possible, all the rock, corals, fish, inverts, etc. Now, just 20 minutes away, you probably won't have to do anything else with the buckets (like a heater or airstone), so you should pretty much be set there.
When I moved my 40, I drained the tank till it was almost empty, then simply moved it. If possible, leave the sand in there undisturbed. But, I don't know how heavy that 90 will be with the sand and just enough water to cover the sand. Hopefully you can lure in help for the move
Then just get new location, put in the rocks, as much old water as possible, then all the creatures Then you should be good to go.
If you have to remove the sand as well, I believe most suggest also washing it well. I am not 100% on that though, so you might want to wait. But if you don't have to touch the sandbed, you will be miles ahead in avoiding a mini-cycle.
O

 

hope my comments help

 

Oh good Lord, I missed that!!!! Look at the Sig!!! OK here is what I would do....

**Buy several 5 gallon buckets and a three plastic garbage cans that you will use just for aquarium stuff.

**Siphon off some good water first. Removing the LR first will stir up all sorts of gunk and cloud the water. You want to get as much good water out of there as possible. You will end up changing out about 50% so just keep that in mind.

**You will want to premix about sixty gallons just in case the day before and store it. I would do this at the site you are moving it to. One small PH each in two thirty gallon garbage cans will do.

**Take out LR into one of the garbage cans (should fill about half way up) and put some water in there. Throw a PH in there to get water flow. No heater necessary. For the move over to the other house, I would do it in 5 gallon buckets, keeping it damp at the very least.

**Most of the water left will be unusable. No problem. I ended up doing a 60% water change on my move with no ill effects.

**Place the livestock in small 10 gallons tanks with a heater and a PH. I had my livestock in three holding tanks for five days an nothing died except for a Xenia frag.

**Now, either move the 90g tank with the sand or, if you take the sand out, replace it with new live sand. You can wash the old out really well......just don't put it back unwashed. I did that and ended up with a two month cycle.

**When it is at the other house, if you want to paint the back, do it now. Let dry and set up the next day. The fish and corals should be cool. Like I said, mine lasted five days.

**Set tank up, put in sand.

**Glad wrap over sand.

**Let water in tank slowly so the glad wrap rises with the water level. Tank will be clear at the end of it. Use the water from the holding tanks. It will be OK. Don't use the water that the LR was in. It will be gross. That's where your premix is going to come in handy.

**Add in LR

**Bring temp up to par

**Add in livestock.

If you have a chance, do some water changes now and keep that water. It would come in useful and would be better than adding so much premix. If you could do 30% with water change water and the other 30% from premix, that would be ideal IMO.

If I missed anything guys and gals, let me know.

 

So I am sure everybody told you how to do it all...but I will give you my 2 cents, tell you how I did it to move a 75g.

Make sure you have half of new water ready aerated and heated at your new house. You can probably grab the heater and air stone that you used for this large new water change water and use it for one of your livestock containers.

Go to Home Depot, but 2 27gallon long rubbermaids with lids, with your 90g I would buy more of all these totes.

Buy some 5gallon buckets as well.

You need to buy a couple large trash cans with lids...don't worry about the price because you can take all these back the next day. You will probably want to use one of these trash cans for the new water waiting at your new house.

Buy some large plastic bag liners.

Put the bag liners in the totes.

Turn your system off. Siphon half the water into your totes.

Grab the LR and place it in totes, I put mine mostly in the long trash cans. What I didn't do that now I wish I had was baste some of the LR off and try to clean it up. You don't want the LR out of water for too long so be quick if you are gonna baste them off. What I also didn't do was aerate the water in the LR. I think that because of this I had quite a bit of die-off. Overall I lost no livestock in the move and didn't really see any major parameter spikes either. But I am pretty sure that all your beneficial bacteria needs to stay aerated throughout the move. Seems to me that the sump would need to still house some water, but I emptied mine.

Now your tank will look very cloudy and disgusting. Gather all of your livestock and put into the 27g long. If you have lots of livestock you may need to put them into 2 longs. You will then need 2 airstones and 2 heaters...whatever you would use for a 20g tank...pretty cheap. If you have anemones or other corals or things that need to be seperate, this is what the small 5 gallns are for. I put LR in ALL of my traveling containers, especially the one with the fish so they could hide. Also, make sure you have a LARGE fish net. And go to the LFS and grab some fish bags. What we did was have someone holding the clear fish bag in a corner in the tank, then another person led the fish to the bag with the net. The less water that you have in your tank, the easier it will be to catch the fish. The fish should not be in the tank without air for more than an hour.

Make sure the 27g holding tank is ready and working when you put the livestock in. You can take this over to the new house and set it up in your bathroom while you are moving every thing else. Keep the lights off and keep it covered.

So what I did was clean out all of my substrate and threw it away. When I got to the new house I put the LR in first, then put the new sand around the LR, then when I began to fill it back up I just poured it slowly over the rocks.

I was not prepared at all. I only was able to save half of the old water. I had to run around town like a mad woman trying to buy up distilled water at 11pm at night. So by the time the tank was full and the heat was up to par, the fish were put in there at 3am. We used hair dryers to help heat up the water...lol

Good luck...make sure you have help...it is really not half as bad as it seems, and the faster you can get it done, the better for all.

 

thank you all for your advice. i have 3 weeks to prepare so i can get things set at the new house before the big take down.

I am going to check some lfs to see about getting a couple of 20 gal tanks to put the fish in. all i have now is a couple of 5 gallon tanks i use for qt. i should be able to use the powerheads from the DT in those once it is broke down.

i guess this would be a great time to clean all my LR and paint the back of the tank. thinking i will add about 50% new water to the tank to help eliminate an nitrates i stir upo with the move.

once i get it set up should i leave the lights off for a couple of days or go right into my normal timer schedule?

i have 3 tangs and i have read how easily stressed they get.

 

I think your fish, especially tangs, would be happier in one of those 27gallon long rubbermaids that I mentioned. The only reason being that it is darker, because the rubbermaids are black plastic. Plus it would be way cheaper to buy a couple of those than another small tank.

You will only need to keep your lights off for about one day. So if they get put in during the afternoon just keep the lights off until the next morning.

Just make sure when you clean your rocks that you clean them in your tank water. I.e, one of those rubbermaids would be great, and just look at the rock very carefully to try and not kill small things like snails. Just baste them off and you could find a soft brush to scrub them a little. Wear gloves too. Throw those couple gallons of nasty rock cleaning water out when you are done using it. And if you have an extra airstone or 2 the rocks need it also in the moving bins, but if you hurry with the move they should be fine for a little while.

 

Thanks for the help on moving a tank. I am in a similar situation. I dont know where I am going to go yet though. Just a follow up question if dahos doesnt mind, How do I seperate a red monti that has encrusted itself to 2 big rocks? I need to take them out 1 at a time but it is attached to both.

 

Don't forget to not add sand until all of your live rock is set up. You can always add sand the next day after your filtration is all in tact. Remember to make a mark or visually memorize where the water level is in the display tank after you have shut off the pumps. Then take out some water and add the sand and put water back in up to that mark. That is the smart easy way.

Make sure to check the floor for leveling beforehand and have shims ready if needed.

Remember you can always use one of your pumps to more easily transfer water if you have the proper tubing.

Have at least a couple able bodied men to help you. There is always someone you know that's out of work and can use $20 or so if you don't have family.

The live rock can survive pretty well for a day but if you want you can wrap them in wet newspaper.

Here's an idea you might like to do and that is to get a piece of eggcrate and cut it to fit the bottom of the tank and lay it in there before you add the rock. This will protect the bottom glass in case of an avalanche and raise your rock 1/4" .

Good luck!8)