Wish me luck

[skidoctor]

Breaking down my 90g tomorrow and moving 20 miles down the road. I've been planning this for weeks, have some friends in the hobby helping me out, have nearly 60 gallons of fresh water waiting at the new place.
This comes at just the right time since I've lost 2 corals via stn in the past week and am in desperate need of a water change. This will serve as a BIG water change, hopefully setting my system back to normal. I'll be taking approximately half of my existing water to make things easier, transporting the fish and corals in large coolers and buckets. It also gives me an opportunity to try and get my clowns and anenomes to get together (the clowns don't recognize either anenome in the 90), transporting them together in a smaller container
My one big worry is my sandbed in both dt and sump. I know I should use new sand, but that is not an option right now. I would run bb, but I have a melanarus and sleeper goby that I can't part with. I run a shallow bed in the dt and will siphon it as well as I can once the livestock and rocks are out of the tank. Once at the new location I plan on removing the sand, rinsing well with rodi, and reusing. I will more than likely ditch the sand in the sump since it serve little purpose (less than 1" which remained after a pathetic sump/ fuge attempt).

 

[EllieSuz]

Good luck. The sand scares me too, but it sounds like you've thought this out very well.

 

[skidoctor]

I forgot to mention- I've only had this setup since the beginning of December and have siphoned the sand most times I've done water changes. Hopefully this has reduced the amounts of toxic gases within the sand bed.

 

[Steve Canyon]

Why rodi rinse? You'll kill it in the process. I would think an aggressive wash, rinse, repeat of your sand and rock with the water you are bringing with you would be my approach. Dump the old water after the rinse. Use 100% new makeup water. I'm interested to read what others would say to this suggestion... I would heavily medicate the old transportation rinse water.

 

[ontop27]

I would just not touch the sand if you kill all of the live sand you may have a cycle

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Posidion]

Ben there done that just from one floor to another in the house. I would recommendusing the water you plan to leave behind to rinse the sand in a shallow tub. Do so in small batches so it's easy to agitate. You won't get all the dirt outbuy the bulk of it will, and you'll preserve the bacterial colonies.

 

[skidoctor]

Well, it was a relative success.
The main issue was water temperature. Both, in the buckkets I transported and from the water I had waiting at my new house. It appears that the heater I was using with fresh water crapped out last night. the time consumed bringing that water up to temp only added to the time fish and corals had to stay in buckets. It took longer than expected, and I started to freak out once I saw fish laying on their sides and gilling pretty badly. I began acclimating once the temperatures were within 2 degrees. From that point I could almost see the sigh of relief on the fishes faces, and everyone went into the pool with no problems.
One major issue occured that I see as nothing more than a blessing in disguise. I had forgotten to place my 29g sump down before placing the stand over it. A pane of glass cracked while trying to fanagel it in the stand (there was never any leaking though). As a solution I grabbed a 20 gallon rubermaid which now house equipment only, allowing me to get rid of an old sandbed that I didn't want to reuse anyway. I also will end up with a TON of extra live rock even after I rescape the DT.
Overall, today was a trying and stressful but gratifying day. I will be rescaping tomorrow night after lax practice, which I know will not be a walk in the park but nowhere as bad as today. Thanks for everyones help and encouragment, especially Adam, Kyle, and Dustin. It would have been a disaster without you. I'll keep everyone informed as far as any equipment, livestock or liverock I will not be using, as well as the progress of the new/ old reef.

 

[tmz]

Whew, I hope I never have to move mine.

 

[GratefulReef]

Ive moved my tank 75miles away, only lost an urchin that was already very old to begin with. I found that getting friends to help move my furniture and such so that I could deal only with my tanks made it much much easier to get everything done seeing as I didnt need to worry about helping move other things inside. I dont fear moving, its really not as bad as it seems so long as you try to keep calm, and clear headed in fact I almost welcome moving as a new adventure in rescaping my reef, 5 gal buckets and totes with lids that fit tight are your best friend. I wait until the last possible minute to tear the tank down and its the first thing I set back up at the new place usually by the time I'm done all my furniture and things are also inside.

 

[teamdulski]

Glad it went well Seth.