irishrose302
New member
Well, I thought I would give an update on my weekend adventure.
We made it to NC with minimal fatalities. I lost one fish and another looks really rough but is still eating.
We were scheduled to leave by 9 am on Saturday morning so I got up around 5:30ish to start tearing down the tank. Boy did I UNDER ESTIMATE that one!!! 9 am rolled around and I was still catching fish. I still had to take apart the Chiller, skimmer, lights, acjr and pumps. Then collect substraight to seed my 150g, bag the rest for storage and rinse out the old tank so that it wouldn't stink.
I thought I only needed 5 buckets, ended up with 13. Estimated 3 boxes for Corals, had 6 boxes.
My original plan for transporting the fish on a 14 hour drive consisted of a heavy duty air pump, tubing, tubing splitters plumbed to the buckets to airation. I also put chaeto in each bucket for the fish to hide in and to provide a little Buffer from the motion of the truck moving. I used something called Bag Buddies (tablet form) to help reduce Ammonia, produce additional o2 and calm the fish (clove oil) to reduce stress. Well, I was 3 air hoses short for buckets which started up some high blood pressure for me. I knew today was going to be rough. I put those ones in the very back so that I could dose them regular with the Bag Buddies tablet.
We finally got out of the house at 1:20pm (did I mention we were suposed to leave at 9?)
Well, by the time we hit Ohio, the blizzard was well under way. We did about 25 miles per hour due to conditions. We didn't get out of Ohio until 9pm Saturday night. (any other time we would be out of Ohio by 3pm) I was so stressed I was almost crying. To make matters worse West Virginia and Virginia was in the same blizzard AND all the fast food resturaunts were closed due to weather. We counted 13 crashed or flipped semi's, at least 20+ car crashes: several of them included ambulances and firetrucks. At one point it was so bad we were at a dead stop for about an hour. Some stretches of the turnpike was down to one maybe two lanes (actually has 3 lanes) past the turn pike it was pretty much one lane with 2 to 3 foot of snow on either side. I really hate the drive through the mountains so I took a 2 hour nap so that I would not drive Greg insane with my hysterics over the bad driving habits of others in the mountains.
By the time we hit the NC state line (3am) we had been up since 5:30 am Saturday and had not eaten all day. We finally got to the house at 6 am Sunday morning.
We unloaded all the buckets and boxes and I got to work starting the drip lines for acclimation. My other half drove the whole time and so he went to bed (9am Sunday) I stayed up and rebuilt the live rock in the tank using the rest of the rock from my old tank, mean while floating all the small pieces of coral to bring their temp up. By the time I got the liverock set up, fish acclimated and in the tank, all the Corals unbagged and unboxed into the tank, it was 1:30 pm Sunday. So far I had been up 32 hours and was ready to crash. I really needed to get the skimmer set up but just didn't have the energy.
I am still putting the hardware together for the tank but finally got the skimmer in on Sunday night with a few circulation pumps.
I am pretty happy with the outcome of our disastrous trip. I will post pics with specs of my new tank this afternoon.
Thanks for reading my rant.
We made it to NC with minimal fatalities. I lost one fish and another looks really rough but is still eating.
We were scheduled to leave by 9 am on Saturday morning so I got up around 5:30ish to start tearing down the tank. Boy did I UNDER ESTIMATE that one!!! 9 am rolled around and I was still catching fish. I still had to take apart the Chiller, skimmer, lights, acjr and pumps. Then collect substraight to seed my 150g, bag the rest for storage and rinse out the old tank so that it wouldn't stink.
I thought I only needed 5 buckets, ended up with 13. Estimated 3 boxes for Corals, had 6 boxes.
My original plan for transporting the fish on a 14 hour drive consisted of a heavy duty air pump, tubing, tubing splitters plumbed to the buckets to airation. I also put chaeto in each bucket for the fish to hide in and to provide a little Buffer from the motion of the truck moving. I used something called Bag Buddies (tablet form) to help reduce Ammonia, produce additional o2 and calm the fish (clove oil) to reduce stress. Well, I was 3 air hoses short for buckets which started up some high blood pressure for me. I knew today was going to be rough. I put those ones in the very back so that I could dose them regular with the Bag Buddies tablet.
We finally got out of the house at 1:20pm (did I mention we were suposed to leave at 9?)
Well, by the time we hit Ohio, the blizzard was well under way. We did about 25 miles per hour due to conditions. We didn't get out of Ohio until 9pm Saturday night. (any other time we would be out of Ohio by 3pm) I was so stressed I was almost crying. To make matters worse West Virginia and Virginia was in the same blizzard AND all the fast food resturaunts were closed due to weather. We counted 13 crashed or flipped semi's, at least 20+ car crashes: several of them included ambulances and firetrucks. At one point it was so bad we were at a dead stop for about an hour. Some stretches of the turnpike was down to one maybe two lanes (actually has 3 lanes) past the turn pike it was pretty much one lane with 2 to 3 foot of snow on either side. I really hate the drive through the mountains so I took a 2 hour nap so that I would not drive Greg insane with my hysterics over the bad driving habits of others in the mountains.
By the time we hit the NC state line (3am) we had been up since 5:30 am Saturday and had not eaten all day. We finally got to the house at 6 am Sunday morning.
We unloaded all the buckets and boxes and I got to work starting the drip lines for acclimation. My other half drove the whole time and so he went to bed (9am Sunday) I stayed up and rebuilt the live rock in the tank using the rest of the rock from my old tank, mean while floating all the small pieces of coral to bring their temp up. By the time I got the liverock set up, fish acclimated and in the tank, all the Corals unbagged and unboxed into the tank, it was 1:30 pm Sunday. So far I had been up 32 hours and was ready to crash. I really needed to get the skimmer set up but just didn't have the energy.
I am still putting the hardware together for the tank but finally got the skimmer in on Sunday night with a few circulation pumps.
I am pretty happy with the outcome of our disastrous trip. I will post pics with specs of my new tank this afternoon.
Thanks for reading my rant.
