on buying the whole farm...

[Brad Black]

Help!
I am a new reefer with a small reef nano cube about a year old. Now I'm ready for the big one. I have found someone locally that wishes to sell a complete 100 gal set up, complete with fish, 100 lb LR, 150 lb LS (deep bed) and inverts/corals. If I move the whole set up should I deep six the sand and start with new sand or try to keep it all ? Also what about moving all of the other critters? I also wonder how a tank in this situation may fare after the trauma of all that separation and disruption. Any advice from those with experience in this area welcome, please!

 

[HornetMech242]

During the move you are going to stir up alot of stored up junk in the sand be. But then if you replace all the sand you just got rid of all the beneficial bacteria colonies. When i moved my tank i rinsed half of the sand and then mixed it back with the other at the new location. Did 10% water changes daily until the water stabalized again. I did not loose anything during the move. I did this on a 26g bow tank.

Chris

 

[fishdoc11]

You will most likely be better off replacing the sandbed if it has any age to it at all.
Chris

 

[c_stowers]

I would trash all the sand and put new sand in as well. I moved my tank about a year ago and lost nearly half of my SPS. The only reason I can come up with for the losses is that something was in my DSB and when it got disturbed (removed then reinstalled) it released enough funk into the water to kill some of my corals.

 

[Ludwigia73]

If it's a long distance move, and the sand won't be aerated for a long period of time, I'd get rid of it. But I'd save 10% of the sand bed, and mix it into the new sandbed at varying levels to seed the new bed.

 

[fishdoc11]

I don't think it matters anymore. Look under the name.

 

[Sparg93]

If you're going to move and you disturb part of the middle to lower depths of the bed, you're going to release deadly toxins. The only good part of the bed is the top part, which i would save and put in a container filled with water and maybe even a small battery powered air pump if its a long drive.

Skim the top part of the bed off and throw the middle to lower depths in the garbage, it's filled with really bad stuff. To be extra cautious, i would make sure all your live stock is out of the tank when you start churning up the lower depths of the bed.

Mixing the top part of the old bed with new sand will also help to seed the entire tank after you move.

Goodluck!!

-Craig

 

[Subrafta]

Back when Dr. Ron was on RC as the resident Deep Sand Bed expert he recommended saving the top inch or so of the sand by moving it to a large, flat rubbermaid container. The goal was to disturb the sand as little as possible so that surface critters would not be buried too deep, die, decompose, and in decomposing trigger more deaths.

Don't move the existing sand until the new tank is set up with plain sand and matched to the salinity and temp of the original tank. Then remove, transport, and layer the live sand on top of the plain sand (again trying to keep the live sand as undistrubed as possible).

I've never moved a tank / migrated a tank's contents, but this technique resulted in minimal die-off and a very short cycle for the person who'd asked the question.

John

 

[rustybucket145]

I have recently embarked on the "journey" which you are about to. And I am happy to say that nothing died!! I purchased a 90 gal established reef tank with to many corals to list a few fish and a DSB.

First I purchased 4 large rubbermaid trashcans, mine were 35gal. Also I purchased several rubbermaid storage containers (rectangular w/ lid) to move corals and sand.

I removed enough of the sand to be able to pick up the aquarium. I left the rest (the deepest part) in the aquarium. All the water from the tank, corals, fish and sand went into the rubbermaid containers. In each trash can I put about 20lbs of sand a few pieces of live rock and filled the rest with aquarium water. The rectangular containers were filled with the corals and separated with styrofoam blocks (rubberbanded to the corals) I loaded everything up and traveled approx 20 min and set everything back up. Sand went in the tank first then water then rocks. The entire thing took about 8hrs but everything survived and is doing very nicely in its new location. I would highly recommend bribing a strong friend or two (preferably ex-football players) with beer/ steaks or anything it takes. Moving a large aquarium can literaly be a backbreaking, glass shattering experience.

I am no scientist but I think that moving all the sand really helped with the nitrogen cycle b/c my tank never went through one! The levels were 0 from the first day and are still there. Not to mention all the beneficial bacteria that was preserved by moving the sand. The tank was doing great were it was why change anything?

It is very important to keep heaters in the water you are moving the water temp can drop surprisingly fast. I purchased a few el Cheapo units from wally world and they performed great.

 

[Brad Black]

Rustyb & co,
Well I made the move after much research (45 min drive)
I did get a 100 gal set-up. Acrylic flatback hex with stand/canopy, 20 gal sump with BA skimmer. 4 x 110 W T12 VHO's. Has many corals (several leathers, sinularia, toadstool (others), and 5-6 SPS (blastomussa, frogspawn, hammercoral and trumpet coral. Also 6 fish: chevron Tang, bi-color blenny, royal gramma, bengai cardinal, tomato clown and critters.
I got 2 45 gal trash cans a week ahead of time and set up SW with heater & powerhead for WC's. Then I got 900 5 gal pails and at least 3000 rubbermaid containers with lids ('bout 30 gal each). Good tip-you can "borrow" them from home depot and return them after the move if you don't trash them (did I say that out loud??)Had 4 linebackers there to help and siphoned water into 5 gal pails and rubermaid cont. Took out the LR with the corals put them (attached to LR) in rubbermaid cont (all LR/corals went into rubbermaids with all tank water (about 10-15 containers and the rest of water in the 5 gal pails). once all the LR was out, netted fish, put all in one of the rubbermaids with water/LR and marked it "FISH", immediatly put it in the back of my minivan that was warmning up for 16 hours (sweaty ride home) to keep water temp from dropping. Siphoned the rest of the water right down to the sand (3-5 deepSB) as much as possible and lifted the tank with sand and loaded into van (light tank, had @ 100 lbs LS and still was easy to carry acrylic is da sh-t). loaded all other hardware, etc and drove like mach oh my god all the way home. set it up in reverse did about 30 gal water change (used 70% original water and 30% prepared RO salt water). Filled with water first (major visibility prob) and loaded all LR and coral within 1/2 hr in cloudy water (scary as I couldn't see where I was putting it). Put powerhead and heater in rubbermaid with fish/LR (and some corals) and put lid on. Several hours later when tank cleared I put all fish/critters back in. Took about 5- hours or so toatal (maybe a bit less). That was over 2 1/2 weeks ago and have lost nothing yet (sigh). Damaged the frogspawn a little it will do fine. No detectable cycle yet. No ammoniam nitrite, nitrate or Phos. Am getting a small algae bloom though (strange no phos). Still have to check my pulse a few times a day but I think I'm in the clear (PRAY) with nothing floating dead yet. Added a few small fish and a cleaner shrimp (1 small chromis, 1 small ocillaris clown and 1 juv yellow tang from old smaller tank) little by little with no changes. I was really surprised to find no nitrates at all with all the crap from the old sand bed kicked up (did re-siphon sand before adding water to tank after setup). So that's it, I am still keeping and odd number of appendages crossed hoping I will lose nothing. And I look forward to some comments. Thanks for the help all.
BB