Moving My Tank

[skyfireblaze]

Well, I spent several hours tonight taking down my tank. For those who don't know (probably just about everyone ), I just finished my new stand which I've been working on since about September. Yeah, I know ... Anyways, I've started the arduous task of moving my little 37g over to its new home.

Taking everything out of the tank was fairly easy I suppose. But good grief, getting the sand out of there sure isn't fun. I used one of my kid's sand bucket shovels to get a lot of it out. Then I just filled up one of my spare buckets and refilled the tank and siphoned the rest out. I think I was siphoning sand for over an hour. Maybe next time I'll use some larger diameter tubing ...

Well, I've got my two clownfish in a temporary 10g. Hopefully they won't mind hanging out in there for a few days. There's a few pieces of LR in there with them. The rest of the LR is in another tub. It was kind of fun to sift through the sand bed and pull out a handful of cerith snails that I haven't seen in a couple months.

Well, I think I'm going to call it good for now. I'll have to see how well I can get the tank cleaned up tomorrow. Then it'll be time to get going with the PVC as I plumb in the new sump and skimmer.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas/experience on how to remove algae from the silicone in the tank corners?

Good Night ...

 

[asfullax]

Re: Moving My Tank

The only method I have had success with is a damp towel that was soaked in vinegar, and just rest it on the silicone for a couple hours. Just make sure you rinse the tank afterwards This is about a 50/50 shot depending on how long the algae has been there.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas/experience on how to remove algae from the silicone in the tank corners?

 

[skyfireblaze]

Thanks Alex. I'll have to give that a try. I'm hoping to get the tank cleaned up today so I can start on the plumbing late tonight or tomorrow.

 

[skyfireblaze]

Well, the vinegar seemed to work okay. I used it one the front two seams. There's still a bit of discoloration that wouldn't come off, but it looks a ton better.

Oh, here's a fun tip for everyone ... to get rid of that last bit of sand that you just can't seem to get out of your tank when cleaning it, use some muriatic acid! I made a 50/50 solution (1:1) of water:acid and used that to clean off some of the coraline and regular algae that was still on the glass. It did great, better than what I could do with the vinegar, but then again the muriatic acid solution is stronger than vinegar. Anyways, in addition to getting rid of the coraline, it had the added benefit of dissolving the remaining sand.

I cleaned the back seams with the muriatic acid solution and they came out practically spotless. I don't know if that had anything to do with the acid or if it was just because this was pretty much the first time in over two years that I'd cleaned off the back seams. I went back over the front seams with the acid solution, but didn't see too much of an improvement. I think the algae was just to impeded in the front silicone to ever get it all back out ...

One last tip when using a 1:1 muriatic acid:water mix ... use gloves and consider wearing long sleeves. It'll burn a bit if get on your skin. Not enough to leave any marks, but it stings a bit.

 

[Scooter12ga]

Good News Jon! I can't wait to see the new stand. Overall it sounds like your move is going successfully and I wish you good luck going forward.

 

[rdarlington]

Hah, I will steal all of these great suggestions for when I move my 50 gallon tank next weekend! I'm moving across town and would like to clean off that hard to reach coralline algae that seems to grow right at the substrate line.

-Bob

 

[skyfireblaze]

Finally done!

I spent pretty much all day Saturday moving my rock and water back into the tank. Just about everything is back and running now.

I'll be posting a tank thread somewhere here on RC with some pictures. I'll include a link here too.

Thanks!