Moving my reef

[MTF7]

I am Planning on moving my reef tank and would just like some input on what I plan on doing. First off I have a small tank, it is a 15g tank (about 12g of water), I have nine different corals and a anemone. I also only have two clowns finally I am only moving a short 35-40 minute drive.

Here is what my plan is.
- I have two five gallon buckets, I am going to fill one completely with nothing but water taken from my tank. In the second bucket I am going to put all of my live rock, including corals, and an anemone attacked to the live rock.

-since its a short trip, I have a frogspawn and a hammer coral that I plan on throwing in a bag filled with water too. Along with a birds nest and a setosa that are still attached to a frag plug that I am also going to throw in a bag. I also plan on doing the same thing with the two clowns.

- For my sand I plan on leaving just enough water to keep my sand covered.

- as soon as I get to my house I plan on moving everything that I have in a bag into a small bucket and adding the heater, and a bubbler that will keep the water moving.

- I then will take the water from the bucket with just water in it and put that into the tank. After I empty the first bucket I plan on taking water from the top of the second bucket into the tank but stop before the live rock is exposed.
- then move the live rock into the tank, I plan on tossing a fourth of a gallon from the second bucket to get rid of any detritus that fell off of the live rock.

- After I have the HOB filter on and my two power heads in the tank and turned on I will then move everything from the smaller bucket back into the tank.

So how does this sound? to everyone? All suggestions are very much welcomed! this is my first tank move.

 

[thegrun]

I would suggest having at least 10 gallons of fresh heated saltwater on hand so you don't need to use all your old water which is going to get murky with detritus once you start removing rocks. Use at least 4 buckets with lids. One half full for the fish only, two for the corals and rock and the fourth full of fresh heated saltwater. If your tank is more than 6 months old I would not reuse the old sand, it will contain enough detritus to kick off a new cycle when you remove the rocks. Better to start with new dry sand washed well to remove the fines (dust). It's likely the water in the two buckets with the rocks will be too fouled with detritus to reuse, that's when the new saltwater comes into play.