Moving to a different town... Need Advice

soluki

soluki

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May 7, 2007
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I will be moving in about 2 weeks and need some advice on how to move my tank of freshwater platys & danios. It is a 10 gallon tank and is terribly overstocked right now (they had a population explosion - there are lots of little guys in the tank now.) I am planning to get a bigger tank but wanted to hold off cuz I knew I'd be moving soon. Anyway, what is the best way to move the fish? Also, I am moving to a place that has well-water, not municipal water. Any hints on whether that water is okay or not? Do the standard water tests find anything that would be a problem? Or should I buy water at the store - and if so, what kind? I think someone said that distilled water is not good....?
 
How far are you moving? Put the fish in a cooler. You may need a battery powered air pump depending on how long the fish will be in the cooler.

Keep your filter media wet.

The water should be fine to use. You will want to test it. I would bring some old water with you so you can adjust the fish to the new water. Good luck.
 
It is about an hour away from where I live now. Dumb question here - do I put the fish right in the cooler with water syphoned out of the tank? Or should I put them in baggies? How many fish per bag? Are they happier in a bag by themselves or do they like friends with them?
 
From experience, its best to put them in bags instead of straight in the cooler with the water. Its a LOT easer to acclimate them and get them into the tank when you get to your destination when they are in bags.

Test the water at the new location, and basically acclimate the fish just as you would if you were bringing them home from the pet store. As other posters have said, keep your filter media wet.

Set the tank back up as soon as you get to the new place. The fish will be fine in the bags for at least 3 hours (mine had to stay in bags for about 6 and I didnt loose a one.) Theres no need for an air pump, if you use bags, use ziplock ones (I doubled the bags for mine and used the gallon ones) so if need be you can open them to allow fresh air in the bag so the water stay oxygenated.

When you set the tank up at the new place, dont forget to add water conditioner to it, altho you probably wont have to worry about chlorine or chlormaines, there may be heavy metals in the water that your fish wont be used to that water conditioner will help with. When I moved my tanks, I was going to take a good portion of old water with me, but since i had a 75 g , 2/ 29g, a 20g l, and a 37g tank, I was unable to do this, so all my tanks got 100 percent water changes with no adverse affects to the fish.

About the fry. One of my 29g has guppy and there fry in it. There was no way I was able to catch all the fry out of the tank, so.. I caught what I could, left soem water in the tank, removed the majority of the substrate and all the deco. The majority of these fry survived the move, all may have I dunno..i didnt see any dead ones.

HTH
 
since your fish are small, i would just go with gallon-sized ziplock bags. one for the danios, one of the platies, and one for the platy fry. keep them in the dark after you put them in the bags. putting all of the bags in a larger black garbage bag can help with this.

keeping the fish in the dark is one of the advantages of coolers or rubbermaid containers. plus, they hold more volume than ziplock bags so the water remains more stable for longer.
 
i just use a 10g plastic tub, you can get them at walmart, kmart, whatever mart you have nearby. they're like $3. siphon out some tank water into it (make sure you or whoever is helping you can lift it), then lower the water level in the tank. if you have live plants, put them in the plastic tub. if you have biowheels, throw those in too. remove all other decorations - i like to put mine into a plastic bag inside of a box, or into another plastic tub. i have like 7 of them.

then just net the fish out and put them into the tub. using two nets makes things go a lot faster. i do not think that bagging the fish is any less stressful on them - not only does the whole process take longer, but there is more chance of things going wrong when you are not experienced in using them - leaky bags, dropping bags, dropping fish.

all i do when moving to the new place is to add some of the old (moving) water and some prime to the tank once it is in place. then move the fish into the tank, and then carefully pour in the rest of the water from the moving container. then s l o w l y start adding new water. I do it at about 1/3-1/2 the rate i would do a normal water change. match the temp to the shipping water (or if it is cold, just a few degrees warmer), not to what you want the temperature to be. that gets taken care of by the heater - again, slowly, so the fish can adjust.

if you are still more concerned about the new water, bring an extra 5g bucket of your old water (from the tap, not all from the tank). that way you can refill the tank with what your fish are used to and then worry about acclimating them more slowly after the move with daily 10-20% changes for a week or something.

after doing 5 moves in the last 5 years with no less than three tanks per move (all of them over 2 hours, one of them with fish in buckets over 8 hours due to a problem) i have not lost one fish doing it this way.
 
Any chance you can find a bigger tank for cheap and set that up at the new place? Then move fishies into new accomodations!!!

Try Craigslist - I got a 40 gallon with cover, filter and heater for $20 there.
 
Just wanted to post an update - I ended up moving the tank water in plastic baggies in a cooler, but left about 3 gallons of water in the tank with all the fish still in the tank. They all survived the trip! Was able to set the tank back up with almost all the original water. Slowly switched them over to the new (well water). The platies had a population explosion and my tank is way overstocked now. Took the advice about craigslist and found a 29 gallon tank with stand! Got it all set up and am treating the water with cycling bacteria - the seller said the tank is almost brand new - she had aquatic frogs in it - I got it with no gravel though so probably will need time to build up the good bacteria. Have had it up and running with the filter, etc for about a month now (no time to move the fishies and I am also a little nervous about the somewhat new tank - don't want to kill any of my little friends when it cycles.) However, I think tomorrow is the day I will start moving some of them to the new tank. Will introduce 3 of them to start and let the tank cycle. I think they will be thrilled to get out of the crowded tank they are in - the fry are growing bigger and starting to put too much waste into the 10 gallon tank to sustain the large group in there now. Thanks for all the good advice here - will post back and let you know how it goes.
 
Go out and get some gravel and wash it and put it in tank if you have not already. Then all you have to do is move your already "cycled" filter from the 10 gallon to the 29 gallon, make sure your water temperature is close to the same as the 10's and transfer your fish. Leave both the cycled 10's filter and the 29's filter on the tank. Just monitor your water parameters on a daily basis since you are overstocked. You should not have any problems. This is the quickest way to cycle a new tank. Most of your beneficial bacteria is in your filter unless your running ugf or rugf type filtration.
 
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