So I'm going to be moving my 28 gallon NC in the next couple of days and I was hoping to run my plan by the experts over here and get some advice.

A little background. The tanks been setup for give or take 18 months and everything is stable. Current inhabitants are a pair of clowns and their host BTA, cleaner shrimp, CUC, and a few corals. I have 4 sps frags sitting on a frag rack, and theres not really any corals that are attached to any of the big rocks (besides the nem). One rock is also completely covered in GSP but I'm convinced I could just take the whole rock out of the tank, throw it in the bed of the truck, transport it, and it'd be fine.

For the last month i've been siphoning out sand when I do water changes because I plan on putting new sand in after the move. So basically the plan is to put 3 or 4 gallons of tank water into three 5 gallon home depot buckets, put the live rock in one and the fish, shrimp, and CUC in another, then put the nem and its big rock and the chaeto in the third.

At this point I would take out the sand and discard it, after searching for straggling snails, and remove all the pumps and misc. equipment. Then pack everything up and move it to the new apartment.

Once we get here I have a 30 gallon steralite plastic container that I'm going to use to mix up 20 gallons of fresh new saltwater in. I'll cook it for a day or two so its ready by the time we get here. At this point I just assemble everything and put in the new (heavily washed... minimal clouds!) sand. Then just start filling the tank up.

I dont know the actual volume of the tank but I doubt theres more than 20 gallons of water in it, so i'll probably try to use 8-10 gallons from the old tank, and fill the rest with the new water.

I'm only moving the tank a little over 4 miles so hopefully the temperature hasnt changed too much and everything should up pretty well.

So how does that sound? Sorry for the crazy long post but I've never moved a tank before and I'm kinda dreading it.

Also two questions:

Do the fish and inverts need to acclimated to the water once its time to put them in? I figure it wouldnt hurt but the water should be pretty close to the same right?

When i pick up new sand should i get live sand or dry "dead" sand?

I appreciate any advice or tips that you all may have

thanks

That's pretty long. Don't disturb the sand bed (including removing buried rock) until you have all of the livestock and water that you wish to move out of the tank. Once you do, the water will become fouled and unusable.

If you do this, wrap it up in newspaper soaked with tank water. You could do this with your other rock too, although I might buy a Rubbermaid Brute trash can to move all of the rock (including the one with GSP on it) in tank water.

Save some of the sand (siphoned off the top layer) to seed the new sand with. A couple of cups will suffice.

The Cheato might irritate the anemone. I'd probably transport the algae with the live rock instead.

Consider another 5 gallon bucket, filled with a gallon of vinegar and a couple of gallons of water, to move your submersible equipment. This will help clean it and prevent deposits from drying on it. A quick brush off and rinse should suffice when you are ready to set it up.

Sounds like a good plan, but I'd make 25 gallons of new water just so you are sure that you have enough. You may or may not wish to use all of the water that you transported (it allows you to make the call instead of having to use it no matter what). Left over new water can be used for a water change the next day.

It will take a bit longer than you think to move everything, and the temp will have dropped off by then. I wouldn't heat the new water so that it's a closer match. Since floating a 5 gallon bucket is hard, I would exchange a few cups of new water with the transported water every few minutes (or a half an hour) to help acclimate to temp, pH, and other elements.

Either one will be alright to use. Dry sand is cheaper, so I'd recommend using dry when setting up a 'new' tank. However, I feel that this is a good application to use live sand.

Good luck with your move. I'm sure that it will work out for you.

lol i was just kidding about the GSP. Its going in tank water with the rest of the stuff. Im just convinced that the stuff is pretty much invincible. Thanks for the reply and the suggestions! I picked up 20 lbs. of live sand today, and I'm mixing up 22 gallons of new water as I type. Tomorrows D-Day.. Wish me luck!!

This is all really great advice. I plan on moving from the Detroit area to DC around June....and i've started my research early.

Thanks!

Either one will be alright to use. Dry sand is cheaper, so I'd recommend using dry when setting up a 'new' tank. However, I feel that this is a good application to use live sand.

Good luck with your move. I'm sure that it will work out for you. smile.gif

using live sand into a new tank is fine, but using live sand into a tank thats going to have live stock is a no no, adding large ammounts of live sand will cause a mini cycle, because some of the the live bacteria dies of when added to the tank. hope this helps, im moving over my 24g nano to a RSM130d and im just using carib-sea dry sugar sand (heavilly rinsed).

Hmm...why would the live bacteria die when introduced into a tank that has available oxygen and food?

Better reasoning would be that the bagged 'live' sand contains more organics than rinsed dry sand. This might actually be the case; however, I don't feel that bagged live sand contains more organic material than the established bio-filter (the live rock) can handle. I believe the bacteria that it contains will help prevent a mini-cycle which could be caused by incidental die off from the move. Either way, keep an eye on your ammonia and nitrite levels for a bit; it might be helpful to have some Amquel Plus or Prime around just in case.