Has anybody moved their tank from one state to another state?

[psilentchild]

I'm trying to move to another state. I 2 locations in mind, 1 is 10 hours and the other 1 is 14 hours away. I was thinking about paying my lfs to load it on the uhaul, then pay a lfs to unload it when I get there. I was going to buy 2 battery operated air pumps, 1 for the fish and 1 for the LR. Can anybody offer any other suggestion? My tank is 10 ft long 430 gallons.

 

[Poriferan]

I have done an 8 hour move. I put the Live rock, corals and fish all in separate coolers. I used a power converter to run air pumps and kept the temp around 75 (Suburban) Only change I would make next time would be to bag the corals separately, some got a little beat up sloshing into each other in the coolers. I was able to leave the substrate in the tank with a little water on it. I had no causalities doing this. Not sure if you could use heat packs (like used in shipping) inside bags floating in the water to help maintain temps in the back of a U-haul, just and idea.

 

[gone fishin]

I moved from Connecticut to Wisconsin last year. I however sold off my livestock on my local club. I broke down the rest placed the LR in totes. The movers crated and uncrated my 180 and placed where I wanted it. If it got damaged it was on them. The down side was I basically started from scratch. rinsed off all my now dead rock, new sand and cycled. The upside I was not under any pressure to get it back together so I could make some changes to the system and scape it differently.

In hindsight I am glad I broke it down. Moves never go smoothly and mine was no exception LOL. Good luck

 

[maddmaxx]

I moved 3hr from state to state.... please don't expect 100% success rate. nothing goes as planned in this hobby,,, it can be done and its not extremely hard, just need proper planning and materials for the move..make any adjustments to your tank before resetting it up. clean sand...keep a couple pounds of live sand on the side to place on top of the newly cleaned sand...wet news papers or towels drapped ontop of the live rock will not keep anything alive, you will have much die off on each piece of rock. so either submerge every piece in buckets or understand you will have to do some rinsing of the rock and wait for the over all system to go thru a cycle again......

just understand, stay positive, negative thoughts translate to negative results....

 

[petere1989]

glad i'm reading this. I'm moving from Illinois to California in a year. I think i'll just sell my livestock. Good luck with the move. Keep posted what you end up doing!

 

[gone fishin]

glad i'm reading this. I'm moving from Illinois to California in a year. I think i'll just sell my livestock. Good luck with the move. Keep posted what you end up doing!

My thinking was moving is stressful enough without having to worry about livestock. Selling them local I also figured they had a better chance than bouncing halfway across the country.

 

[Breadman03]

I just moved 8 miles with a 75 gallon tank. Unless you will have the luxury of moving the tank separately from the rest of your stuff, I would just break it down and start over, perhaps saving the live rock.

I saw one thread where a person used an inflatable kiddie pool as a holding tank while changing tanks within his home. You might be able to move everything into a pool while you get the tank set up where you want it.

 

[Robb in Austin]

Mr. SaltwaterTank has an episode on this I think.

 

[mixedreefjunky]

I moved my tank 2300miles from Miami to Denver over three days with 5 fish, several inverts, snails, over a dozen frags, and over a dozen colonies and made it successfully with all. I was into reef keeping for only two years and could not bear to let anything go. It was a 65gal mixed reef. I did it in two 30gal Rubbermaid containers with temp controlled and water motion while driving. Lighting was supplied every nite while I slept. I set it up with pre-cycled CarribSea with no issues at all, except for bleaching of one frag on the trip