Moving fish cross-country
- Thread starter Geekshow
- Start date
I moved from Seattle to Phoenix in early May and brought my fish with me. It was actually very easy. I have 3 corys, 1 bushy nose pleco, 2 SAE, 3 Amano shrimp, 6 neon tetra's, and 7 two day old platy fry. I put all the fish in an orange 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot, along some of my substrate, a couple of small pieces of driftwood, a few floating plants, and of course, my heater. I used a small air pump and an airstone to keep the water oxygenated. My hubby already had a converter for the cigarette lighter, and we didn't need the heater while in the car, so the electrical pull from the small pump was nothing to worry about. We stayed in KOA cabins, so we just moved them into the cabin at night. I bought the lid for the bucket and cut a small hole for the airhose with a utility knife to keep fish and water contained during the trip. I put the rest of my plants, substrate, and bogwood into a couple other buckets with enough water to keep them moist. If you don't mind a mini-cycle and replacing the substrate, you wouldn't need to do this. I also had a bunch of Malaysian Snails I was trying to keep. I choose the orange bucket to keep colors & lights to a minimum since it would be in the back of a Jeep Cherokee and not in a trunk. I didn't feed the fish the entire trip. I had them in the bucket the last day or so in Seattle and the first day in Phoenix. All in all they were in the bucket for just over a week, and unfed for 4 days. All my fish arrived in good condition, even the fry which amazed me. I didn't know I had the fry until I started emptying my tank. I was giving my adult platys to a friend and gave him the all the fry I thought I had. Once I emptied my tank to just an inch or two of water, I found 6 more. I brought them because I couldn't bring myself to euthanize them. I figured I'd give them a fighting chance and take them with me. And it wasn't until I had my tank set up for a couple of weeks here in Phoenix that I found the 7th fry. The first night on the road, the space heater in the cabin stopped working in the middle of the night and the aquarium heater hadn't been plugged in. I woke in the morning to temps in the cabin just below 60 and figured I'd lost the fry for sure, but there they were. That was the only close call we had.
