Moving house!!

[tibba]

I have an established tank (which is still being built up) and I will be moving house in a couple of months, how do I move the tank. I will need to empty the tank in order to move it but I don't want lose my stock. I have a hermit crab, a bananna wrass, turbo snails caramel sea cucumber and some coral (unsure of the species). Has anyone got any suggestions as to how to move?

[Mahlhavoc]

Well, how big is the tank? How much rock?


Buy 2 Rubbermaid(tm) containers, one for fish and water with some rocks and one for rocks and water only, unless you can do all in one depending on size of tank. Grab as many 5 gallon buckets for your sand as you would need.

Start filling the water containers and add a powerhead to the one you'll put fish in, make sure it has a foam filter on it so as not to suck up your cucumber as it will kill everything if it dies also make sure not to crush him with any rock you put in there for bio filtration while these animals wait for transfer. Also put a heater in this rubbermaid so the fish will be warm and cozy.

After moving all the fish and rocks out with water down you can start putting your sand in the buckets.

Now your tank should be empty and you can take a full day or two to move your tank to the new house as long as you have circulation and the correct temp in the fish container.

After the tank is moved and set up add the sand. Now you can start transferring rocks and water over and if you can't carry the container with the fish over to the new place, just use the 5 gallon buckets to transfer.

Hope this has helped.

[Pineapple]

If your tank has been around for a while, I would change out the sand, or rinse it. I made this mistake when I moved my tank. I was only getting new carpet. I did massive water changes while stirring and siphoning the water column. I ended up replacing half the sand. Your cucumber may die. Can you find another reefer who will take it off your hands?

[mysis]

How far away are you moving? How Big is the tank? How Muck LR do you have? and How much sand?

First, if you are moving house and the trip is less than 1 hour no need for circulating the water.

Get about 10 buckets with lids and some really big containers (20 gallons or so) the big containers can be used to carry the water. The buckets can be used for the fish and inverts. Put the wrasse and hermit in 1 bucket. And the turbos and cuke in another bucket. Next remove the rocks that have corals connected to them and put in indvidual buckets, so they don't sting each other. remove everything out of the tank except the sand, unless the sand it to heavy. If the sand is to heavy, put in in the buckets and pour water in the bucket until it is 1 inch over the top layer of sand.