ElectronRider
New member
** I reposted this from a different forum, I recieved no replies there, was hoping for some inputs to this**
Hi everyone, I've lurked here a long time, thought I would throw this out there, and see what people thought of my plan for moving this tank. Any input and advice would be appreciated, as this is the first time I have had to move a saltwater tank.
Tank Info: 75 gallon, a pair of watchman gobies,a pistol shrimp, and a maroon clownfish. 3 types of mushrooms. I have no idea how much live rock I have in the tank, It has never been weighed. However, I would estiamte that approximately 3/5 of the tank space is filled with rock. I have approximately 4 inches of crushed coral on the bottom as well. The tank has a 20 gallon sump, half of it filled with bio-balls. My lighting is 4 65w PC lights. (2 day and 2 actinic).
The Move: 500 yards, moving from the house on the front of the lane, to the house on the back of the lane.
I have mixed 2 30 gallon trash cans of water ( one at the tank location now, one at the end location) and its been circulating for a few days. ( wanted to make sure the water was stabalized, not used to working with such large volumes).
I have 3 shipping containers from my LFS, as well as a small pile of buckets available, for transportation purposes.
I was thinking about doing something like this:
I would shut off my power head, and remove the rock one piece at a time. I'm thinkin that since Im completely tearing down the tank and resetting it, that as I removed each piece of rock (carefully) I would use a bucket and swish out all the detritus and any other foreign objects I might want to get rid of, hopefully not damaging the little criters living in the rock. Then I would place each piece of rock into my containers for transport.
I have several pieces of rock that have undesirables on them, ( 3 rocks with either aptasia, or something simmillar, and 2 rocks with some bubble algae) That I figured I would just scrub with a good stiff brush under running tap water, then let them sit for a day or two in a bucket of fresh water, to make sure I kill off the undesirables, then reintroduce to the tank afterwards.
Once I had most of the rock out, I would replace the lost volume with water from the trash can I mixed up earlier. I'm thinking that this would help dilute the possible problems arising when I have to tear into my substrate ( crushed coral bed). Once all the substrate is removed, I would give it a good rinse before placing into buckets for transport.
I'm not sure how bad my substrate will be. The pistol shrimp and pair of gobies that live together have managed to tunnel into the entire bed on the aquarium, to the point that almost an entire bottom layer of rock is now incorporated into the pistol shrimp complex. I am amazed at this little buggers building ability! So maybe I wont have any kind of spikes, from the pistol shrimp constantly churning up everything in the eternal search for food and building supplies ( sheesh, sounds like me ).
So at this point in time, I have my 3 fish in a bucket, my live rock and mushrooms in transport boxes ( submerged in new saltwater), and be ready for transport to new place.
Once I get the tank back in palce and properly set up, I figured I would just pour all the crushed coral back in, and start placing a few of my base rocks, and start filling the tank with water, while I start creating my reef masterpiece from all the rocks I've got. Once this is complete, and the tank is full of water, and the system if up and running, I would test for all the usual things I test for ( amonia, Ph, nitrates, etc) and then add the livestock back in to place.
I am budgeting about 8 hours for this whole project.
I know this is a lot, but I'm a bit nervous about this whole endeaver, It's been a long road so far, and my tank is doing great! So naturally, I wanna minimise the impact on my overall reef heath ya know? Thanks in advance for the inputs.
Hi everyone, I've lurked here a long time, thought I would throw this out there, and see what people thought of my plan for moving this tank. Any input and advice would be appreciated, as this is the first time I have had to move a saltwater tank.
Tank Info: 75 gallon, a pair of watchman gobies,a pistol shrimp, and a maroon clownfish. 3 types of mushrooms. I have no idea how much live rock I have in the tank, It has never been weighed. However, I would estiamte that approximately 3/5 of the tank space is filled with rock. I have approximately 4 inches of crushed coral on the bottom as well. The tank has a 20 gallon sump, half of it filled with bio-balls. My lighting is 4 65w PC lights. (2 day and 2 actinic).
The Move: 500 yards, moving from the house on the front of the lane, to the house on the back of the lane.
I have mixed 2 30 gallon trash cans of water ( one at the tank location now, one at the end location) and its been circulating for a few days. ( wanted to make sure the water was stabalized, not used to working with such large volumes).
I have 3 shipping containers from my LFS, as well as a small pile of buckets available, for transportation purposes.
I was thinking about doing something like this:
I would shut off my power head, and remove the rock one piece at a time. I'm thinkin that since Im completely tearing down the tank and resetting it, that as I removed each piece of rock (carefully) I would use a bucket and swish out all the detritus and any other foreign objects I might want to get rid of, hopefully not damaging the little criters living in the rock. Then I would place each piece of rock into my containers for transport.
I have several pieces of rock that have undesirables on them, ( 3 rocks with either aptasia, or something simmillar, and 2 rocks with some bubble algae) That I figured I would just scrub with a good stiff brush under running tap water, then let them sit for a day or two in a bucket of fresh water, to make sure I kill off the undesirables, then reintroduce to the tank afterwards.
Once I had most of the rock out, I would replace the lost volume with water from the trash can I mixed up earlier. I'm thinking that this would help dilute the possible problems arising when I have to tear into my substrate ( crushed coral bed). Once all the substrate is removed, I would give it a good rinse before placing into buckets for transport.
I'm not sure how bad my substrate will be. The pistol shrimp and pair of gobies that live together have managed to tunnel into the entire bed on the aquarium, to the point that almost an entire bottom layer of rock is now incorporated into the pistol shrimp complex. I am amazed at this little buggers building ability! So maybe I wont have any kind of spikes, from the pistol shrimp constantly churning up everything in the eternal search for food and building supplies ( sheesh, sounds like me ).
So at this point in time, I have my 3 fish in a bucket, my live rock and mushrooms in transport boxes ( submerged in new saltwater), and be ready for transport to new place.
Once I get the tank back in palce and properly set up, I figured I would just pour all the crushed coral back in, and start placing a few of my base rocks, and start filling the tank with water, while I start creating my reef masterpiece from all the rocks I've got. Once this is complete, and the tank is full of water, and the system if up and running, I would test for all the usual things I test for ( amonia, Ph, nitrates, etc) and then add the livestock back in to place.
I am budgeting about 8 hours for this whole project.
I know this is a lot, but I'm a bit nervous about this whole endeaver, It's been a long road so far, and my tank is doing great! So naturally, I wanna minimise the impact on my overall reef heath ya know? Thanks in advance for the inputs.
