Noob Questions

[bigpaul2600]

I am new to Reef Aquariums, I have owned freshwater in the past and
have recently gotten interested in saltwater. I do have a few
questions that I need to find answers to before I proceed though.

1.I live in a very rural area in NW Kansas. Stuff coming UPS most of
the time takes an extra day to get here. The closest LFS is 3 hours
away. Are live rock/sand/fish/coral going to do ok being shipped to
me? How does that process work?

And

2.I know that these tanks can get over 1,000lbs really fast. One of my
main concerns is that I may not be sticking to this area for more than
2 or 3 more years. If/when I decided to move would I just break
everything down into trashcans and move it? How long will everything
be ok like that? If I move to California or NY (for example) itââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s
going to be at least 2 days by car would everything survive that?

I hope that I get the answers that I want but if not I guess Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢ll just
have to wait until I decided to move to start up a tank.

Thanks in advance.

P.

 

[Purple Penguins]

fish, liverock, coral all generally do pretty good shipping, they are usually packaged very well with plenty of 02 however fish and coral are a bit stressed and need extra acclimation time, most sellers ship 1 day air so they have less travel time but it just depends on the seller what company they use, some use UPS some use FEDEX as for moving, there are many ways to do it, can either bag everything up seperatly or put them into totes or garbage cans, just have to make sure the water temp stays at a constant temp with heater and some way to run all of them and powerheads for oxegenation, 2 days by car should be ok if you make sure on the temp and water movement, I cant gaurantee everything would survive, some would be very stressed out by the move, as for just moving the tank in your house, yes you break it all down move the tank and reset it up where you want it, same way as above with heat and powerheads

 

[Aadler]

Well as for shipping, unless for some strange reason you are not able to get overnight in your area... which i think would be strange, most companies ship coral/fish overnight. Live rock isn't as important, but you may need to drive to the airport to pick it up.

Figure 10-11lbs per gallon. 100g tank - about 1000lbs

If it took 2 days to move everything, very sensitive coral/fish may die. but as long as you pick days that are about 75-85 degrees to move and keep some time a circulation in there (such as a battery powered airpump) you could do it. but again, i would suggest you move just the fish stuff and alreayd had a tank set up on the flip side so you could just dump all the (after 2 days) nasty water.

Id suggest a 20g Long if you wanted to try it out. It is a shallow tank so you can get by with cheaper lighting, but it is long so you can get by with slightly larger fish, wouldnt be to many expensive parts, you could skip the protein skimmer in lew of water changes, and would be fairly easy to move, and if you did lose fish/coral you would only be out about $300 at worst. (the rock will make a 2day move no problem).

 

[bigpaul2600]

Thanks for the quick replies!

I’ve never had anything shipped over night here. The closest UPS/Fedex is about an hour and a half away. The closest major airports are all 5 hours away. So I don’t know how that would work. I guess I could try getting a shipment overnight, I plan on getting some more books on this hobby soon so I will try that.

I’m getting a free aquarium from someone local, they don’t know what size it is and I won’t know until later today. I thought about starting out with a 20g Long but at the same time I feel like I want to go bigger. I guess we will see what happens.

I’m trying to get my game plan all down on paper. Hopefully I will be able to post it here soon so you guys can tell me what I might do different.

Thanks again,

P.

 

[WaterKeeper]

Hi Paul
[welcome]

The biggest problem with shipping is controlling temperature. Marine specimens are accustom to temperatures around 80° F. In the summer they can be much hotter inside a delivery vehicle and in winter the other way around. Prolonged shipping times demand some way to maintain temperature.

For an overview on how to set things up I offer The New Tank Thread. It may help you in starting out.

BTW--When using Word to compose documents turn off the "Replace straight quotes with curly quotes" option in the Format menu. That avoids Chinese characters.

 

[bigpaul2600]

WaterKeeper,

Thanks for the reply.

I have read that post and I enjoyed it, I have read some of your other posts as well and they have all been a big help. I still have quite a few questions as to how some things work. But I will get to those later. If I do start up a tank I will be taking things very slow so like I said before I’m trying to get a game plan down on paper. I need to see it from start to “finish” and have some comments on it before I drop a penny on the hobby. I don’t want to do something wrong and find out about it after the fact. I know that I will probably make mistakes but I want to try and keep them to a minimum.

Thanks again!

P.

 

[WaterKeeper]

:thumbsup:

Bet you didn't know the curly quote bit.

 

[bigpaul2600]

LOL. sure didn't I'm using word 2007 and I couldn't find that option so I'm not sure why it happened in the first post and not the others.

 

[WaterKeeper]

Tis something with the way Vbulletin saves these posts. They appear OK when first pasted and then, somewhat later, the odd characters appear. I know from experience since a ton of my old threads still have them.

Doug, Beerguy, our staff computer guru has never explained why. I think it is just one of those Technical staff vs Editorial staff things and he thinks revealing the secret will take away from his job security.



Note--- Actually Doug deserves a tremendous round of applause for keeping RC up and running. It is a long hard job considering the size of the site.
:thumbsup:

 

[bigpaul2600]

Job Security isn't too much of a worry for us IT guys... we just go flip a switch and mess something up for an hour or 2, look real busy and frustrated, flip the switch back, and look like the hero

 

[WaterKeeper]

:lol:

Actually I think I had guess that.

 

[bigpaul2600]

So I picked up the free tank after work and it turned out to be a 25gal. tank. I filled it up with water on the back porch and let the little bit of spilt water dry around the tank. As of now the ground around it is bone dry so it looks like the tank is leak free.

Guess I can start looking for a stand now. Correct me if I’m wrong but by my calculations this tank will weight in around 300lbs. don’t want to put it on something that won’t hold it.

 

[WaterKeeper]

That should be probably be around 250 lbs but a little over design is fine.