Moving my 55 to a new house -- HELP!

tfish

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Feb 6, 2003
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My husband-to-be and I are in the process of buying our first house. VERY EXCITING! Now I am thinking about how to move my 55 gallon aquarium with fish, plants, and a million pounds of gravel across to our new house which is about 20 minutes away. Oh yeah, we have the whole rest of our apartment to move too! Any tips on how to move the tank with minimal loss to fish and plants...and our sanity? Thanks!
 
Keep everything wet with aquarium's water. You want to keep all the bacteria alive. The media should be placed in a bucket of water or something, or kept very, very wet and transported as fast as possible....that will keep the bacteria alive. I suggest moving the fish in styrafoam (sp) containers with lids. As for the gravel, wrap in very moist paper towels and keep it wet. Anybody else got suggestions.
 
If you have a big cooler with a lock-down lid, use it to move your fish and plants. Fill it about half full of water, add the plants, then add the fish.
 
We successfully moved our fish from VA to FL back in August. :)

We got a large Rubbermaid tub and used some gravel from the tank (46gl) for the bottom, used water from the tank and took our heater with us --- due to the length of our trip, we rigged the heater up to work with the car cigarette lighter outlet.

We didn't lose our fish....not even our 1 eyed 5+yeard old Angelfish. :)
 
Moving too far?

I'm moving approximately 800 miles. I have a 20g tank with no one to give the fish to. I would like to keep them if possible. My trip will be 400 miles, stay there for a week, 400 miles, stay in hotel 2-3 weeks, move into new home. Is this too much of a trip for my fish to reasonably survive? I'd hate to have like a 10% chance of this working, cause as you see it will be a big hassle. So what are the odds, should it be attempted? I would like to do it, but space in the car is going to be hard to get (i.e. only room for fish, not water/substrate, etc.) I was planning on moving them in a cooler or bucket with a heater and a bubbler to keep everything proper. Also, since it will be a significant change in water between the 3 locations, should I go to distilled?
Thanks for all your help in advance,
Eddie
 
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