Never moved a tank - need assistance!

[duckhuntboy]

Hey everybody,

In about a month I'm going to need to move my tank about a mile or so into a house. I have no idea how I'm going to do it. I've been brainstorming and trying to read up about the best solution, but still I don't know the best way....

 

Currently, I have less live rock than I'd like to in my tank (minibow) and I only have three major rock pieces. They are stacked right now, but they aren't attached to each other.

 

I have a few soft corals, zoos, shrooms, etc. in my tank right now, and here are my options I've been thinking of so far:

 

1. un-stack the rocks, and set them on the sandbed. Remove some water, and cart it to my car, and take it easy to my new house

 

2. place all three rocks in 5 gallon buckets. Use the water from the tank to cover the rocks, move them all, and add new water to the tank, and re-acclimate the rocks.

 

3. use a 10-gallon tank with a bit of sandblasting silica as a cushion, place the rocks in there, move the tank, save the water, re-add it, and place the rocks back in the tank.

 

That's all the ideas I had. What's the best thing to do????

[palaegic]

Do you have a sand bed in your mini-bow? Just remember that with sand and water your nano weighs upwards of 60 lbs. At the very least, there are less headaches with moving 7 gallons as opposed to 75.

 

My recommendation is to mix up a fresh 5 gallons of seawater in advance of the move.

Put all of your liverock in 1 bucket and your animals in another bucket, or in my experience a rubbermaid container, or styrofoam cooler. Distribute your existing tank water in the containers that you use - and use the fresh water to make sure that you have complete coverage where necessary. If you have a sand bed in your mini-bow you will want to remove water to the top of the bed - enough to keep it wet. If the breakdown is going to be extended, make use of powerheads and heaters in the appropriate containers. When you are ready to re-establish make use of the water in your containers - but try to avoid dumping detritus that may have become dislodged, back into your aquarium. Use the remainder of the fresh 5 gallon bucket you mixed to make up any difference.

 

Good luck!

[MKramer]

I just moved 2 miles down the street myself, so I thought I'd chime in real quick.

 

Live rock does not need to be kept in water. If only out for a short time, it doesn't even need to be kept wet. My 10g move went something like:

 

1) Bought 5g new saltwater the day before.

2) Heated it overnight so that it was about 5deg warmer than my tank temp (I have an extra heater form my hospital tank).

3) The next morning, I put all the corals and fish into their own containers (I like the "disposable" tupperware/gladware containers), filled 80% with current tank water.

4) Stacked said containers nicely into my cooler. I don't think this is necessary, given the short distance, but it works will for carrying them all.

5) Pulled out all the live rock and put into a standard moving box that I lined with storm window plastic. You could just as easily use a $5 rubbermaid tub from Target.

6) Put plastic over the rocks to prevent the warm sun from drying them out.

7) Drained 5g of tank water into a spare water jug.

8) Disposed of the rest of the tank water, leaving just 1/2" over the sand. Keep in mind that it doesn't tank much water to make huge splashes when moving a tank.... even the little bit I left in there splashed all over the back of my car.

9) Put everything into the back of my car. And drove to the new place.

10) Put the aquarium in its new place.

11) Poured the 5g of old tank water back into the tank. I recommend taking extra care while doing this, to avoid making a mess of the sandbed. I had my girlfriend hold a plate right at the water level, and I poured onto the plate, to diffuse the water.

12) Put the rocks, coral, and fish back in. It was a little hard to aquascape with how cloudy the water was, despite my care in pouring it back in, so I just did rough placement and left the fine-tuning for later.

13) Top off with the hopefully-still-a-little-warm new water.

14) Put the powerheads and heater back in, put the canopy on, and turned everything back on.

 

Including travel time, it took me about an hour.

[SeaMountain]

Good points. I set my tank up without a sump/fuge and now want to drill another tank and then use the current one for a sump/fuge.

 

This is a good piece for making the transfer even though I'm not moving anywhere - yet!

[duckhuntboy]

Hey, that was great advice. The thing about my live rock is all four pieces have corals cemented to them, and I don't really want to break them off just for the move. That's the only reason I mentioned it. That's a good point about only 1/2" of water in the tank. I never thought about how much it actually would splash. I'll let you know how it goes around the beginning of may. Thanks.

[offsprg01]

take it from me the easiest way to move a tank is to empty everything but the substrat and a just enought water in to a bucket or two (depending on size of tnak nad size of bucket) move it then set everything back up with the original water. viola no recycling, no reaclimation. tank is just as good as it was 1 mile before. trust me i move alot so i know.