Need advice on transporting tank

[2peppers]

Hey,

I moved to a new place and the last thing I need to bring over is my tank. Seeing if anyone has any advice for me that has done this before.

It's socked with 3 fish, 2 shrimp, a few crabs, a ton of coral, and And a pretty big anemone.

Any tips/advice is appreciated

Thanks

 

[miralami]

You are lucky since weather here is good. Don't see much of the issue.
How big is your tank? What kind of fish do you have?

 

[reev]

I moved my 125G about a year and half ago. I pulled most of the water in brute barrels. I added in there the rocks there were without corals and some of the LPS corals at the bottom. I took the sensitve/fragile corals out in smaller buckets.

Then I made a mistake . I left about 4" of water in the tank with rubble rocks, sand and most of the fish & inverts. I thought they will be fine. But I lost 2 fish, crushed by the small rocks moving around during transport.

So I suggest taking all the fish out into containers. Snails & crabs should be fine left in the tank.

Once everything was transported, I placed everything in the same room to bring them to the same temperature. After about 1h, I started putting everything back together. Then restarted the system completely.

Beside the 2 fish that got crushed by the rocks, I didn't loose anything else.

BTW, if you tank is large consider emptying it completely. Mine is a 125G glass, 6 ft long x 18" wide. With just 4" of water, ruble & sand it still took 4 guys to be able to lift it. It was super heavy & hard to maneuver it.

As time planing, the whole move took me about 10h, not including the time I spent finding containers, barrels, powerheads, etc.

 

[zeroinverse]

Pre make new salt water in rubber maid tubs or containers. Go buy some Home Depot paint buckets (or old salt buckets) with lids. Drill holes on lids and transport fish in those.

Get a temporary holding tank so you can out corals and or fish in while you reset up your tank. Refilling tank with water (old or new) will cause lots of cloudiness and such.

And as someone says, plan the whole day. 10-14 hours of work. 2-3 hours to breakdown the tank (depends on how big a tank), and hour or so to transport, another 2-3 hours just to do basic setup, and then another 3-4 hours to get all your lights, controllers, rock placed.... Then finally corals and fish go in.

I usually wait a day to put them in.

Oh! And remember

1) "holding tank" should be heated.

2) salt water in your fish tank will likely be cold (another reason I wait a day before putting fish and corals in).

3) get/borrow 5 gallon carboys to transport old tank water

4) get a friend or two to help

 

[zeroinverse]

Although from ur profile, a 29 bio cube should be easy enough to move.

I had to move my 150 gal tank twice.

 

[2peppers]

Haha ya it's a small tank. Hoping it's easy. Just worried about the nem. I was gonna buy a 90 gal for the new place but plans changed.

 

[2peppers]

Moved 3 tanks over the weekend. 20g and 50g freshwaters were easy. The reef tank was another story. Everything was going smooth. I didn't realize the location I chose for my holding tank for my higher end coral was in direct sunlight. (Blinds aren't installed yet and set it up the night before.) When I went to transfer them to the newly setup tank, the water temp in the holding tabk was about 105*. Cooked it all. Lost some rainbow acans, 4 jawbreakers, 2 colonies of regular acans, 2 chalices, and a few others. It was an expensive mistake.

Just putting this out there so no one makes the same mistake as me.

 

[EnderTurtle]

Yup I hear soooo many stories about people losing fish and corals during moves.

Gotta think about it all.