Moving

[shimmy_yaz]

I am buying a house and will be moving in about a month or so. It is about a 20 mile move from my current location. Does anyone have any good tips about moving my 75 gallon reef so that I don't have any loss. Figured there has to be atleast a couple of people with some experience in this matter and any pointers will be awesome.

 

[CarlC]

If you can have water made up ahead of time at the new location that would be a big help. Lots of slat buckets to carry livestock come in really handy. Have the spot for the tank picked out so if you can make water ahead of time you can keep the storage container close by.

Most important I think is to make a check list and check off each item as you do it.

I'll be moving a 90 about 10 miles in a couple of weeks. I'll post the things we did to move it.

Carl

 

[insanefishguy]

I just moved my 55 about 170 miles. I may have went a little overboard but had no loses, so this is what I did...

I bought a new garbage can from walmart and pumped the water into it (it was already on the truck).
All my smaller corals were bagged individually, as were the fish and starfsih and such.
The larger corals all went into a rubbermaid tote with some more of my tank water.
I had another garbage can that I use for ro/di water full at the new house to replace any water I lost along the way.
All in all, I only needed to add 20g of water to the tank when I set it back up. My tank, as I said earlier, is a 55 and the sump is a 20 long, so basically at the end it was just a normal water change.

 

[insanefishguy]

Oh, I also had another 20 long waiting on a table an arms reach away from the table to put my corals in while I was arranging everything. I have a horrible memory so it was nice to be able to look over and see what else I had to work with.

 

[shimmy_yaz]

Thanks for the advice guys. Most of these thing fall into my plan for the move so I guess I am headed in the right direction. I don't have to move the tank right away when I move so I have some time to get things around at the new house which should make it a little easier.

 

[cinnamongirl]

I didn't see this thread ahead of time -- I just posted my experience moving. Not a good day. Hopefully yours goes better than mine. My advice would be to watch the temperature.

 

[CarlC]

Welll after two days of hell Mary and I finally got her tank moved and almost fully running. We haven't hooked the sump and refugium up yet. She lost a coral beauty, a few softies and a cleaner shrimp but eveything else looks like it is going to make it. The most surprising part was a three tier monti plate made it with no breaks! Two buckets of fish, eight buckets of coral and three bins of rock.

Please! Pretty please! She needs to give away a boat load of star poylp frags. I'm to tired to go count them but I think I brought home about 20 good sized pieces to mount.

Time to go wash the coral stink off!!

Carl

 

[shimmy_yaz]

Well I am finally getting closer to the wonderful day I get to dismantle everythign and then race frantically to get it all moved and set back up. I have been trying to do a lot of planning for this nd hopefullly everything will go smoothly.

Now I have a question. My house has a small crawl space in the back section of the house that is about 25' X 8' X 5" high. I am planning on pouring concrete into thsi to make a nice floor and then setting up all of my equipment in this little room so it is all out of the way and hidden. The only problem is I have to figure out a way to get the water ran from this area through the house and to the display tank. The rest of the house sits on a concrete slab so there is no way I can go down through the floor and across into this room. I was thinking about just routing the piping around along the base of the walls and then making a wooden cover for over it to hide them. My queston is though how many bends can I really get away with? I am going to be pumping the water about 30 feet as it is. Also does anyone know which pumps are the best for long distances like this? Don't know if I explained this well enough or not but any feedback would be great. Maybe I will try and draw up a diagram and post later on today.

 

[cinnamongirl]

I assume your room is 5 feet and not 5 inches ;-)

There's a head loss calculator on RC that may help. It's on the left side of the home page. You input the vertical and horizontal distance as well as any bends, etc., and it lets you know how much loss you'll have for various pumps. I used it when I set up my first tank and had the sump in the basement. I suppose you would just put in zero for vertical distance and it would work for your situation.

Vickie

 

[shimmy_yaz]

Ahh kool thanks that will work out amazing for me to figure out how to run all the piping.

For the record it is 5" I am the worldest shortest reefer. LOL Yeah 5' is what I meant.

 

[chuckydaphish]

Good heavy wet protein skimming for the first couple of days is always a good idea. I always keep a bottle of amquell plus on hand and usually dose with some cycle or stress zyme. It also wouldn't hurt to dip your corals in Lugols soltution before returning them to your newly set up tank.

 

[shimmy_yaz]

Ok so I closed the deal on the house and am now able to have more acces to it. The planning has reached the next level and I now have another question. (I am sure they will keep coming LOL) I am going to route the water from the area where the sump/fuge is about 55 feet to the display tank. I already found a pump that should be capable of this. I am going to use tubing rather than PVC pipe to eliminate the need for a lot of sharp 90° bends. (hopefully I can get away without kinking the tubing as well). Now my question is for the line from the tank down to the sump. This has to travel about 55 feet total. About 15 feet from the tank I am going to have to take the line up about a foot off the floor. Do you think the overflow has enough pressure to push the water through the pipe, up the 1 foot incline and then the rest of the way through the line? I am just concerned that I am not going to get good flow with this setup. Sorry I tried to explain the best I could.

 

[shimmy_yaz]

The tank is at the new house. I didn't get a chance to get everything around for the new setup but it is here and all seems well thus far. Wow was that a pain. I think I am selling the tank with the house next time. LOL

 

[shimmy_yaz]

Well thus far all I have lost is my bicolor psuedo so I am fairly happy. I hate that I lost a fish over the move but it could have been a lot worse I guess.