How to get 75g+LR/LS from Gulf Coast to Austin?(help)

[AustinVines]

My wife is close to letting me buy a tank that I found. 75g, stand, canopy
y, sump, VHOs, all LR and livestock (large gsp and bubble coral colonies) and about 6 fish (p.tang, flame angel, blennies and clowns).

I will try to keep the LR submerged or at least extra moist but imagine that I will have a mini-cycle upon setting it back up. What is the best way to get the corals/LR and livestock from point a to point b and keep them somewhat happy (or at least low stressed) until the tank is up and running again? Thanks.

[GaryP]

Just put it all in ice chests. The corals should be OK. You might want to put a battery powered air pump from WalMart or Academy with the fish. It'll help move the water some too. I think the key is speed. If it has sand, you may want to wash it get the detritus out of it. Just keep some of it unwashed to use as a seed for the sand bed. Its better to bring as much of the original water as possible.

If you can borrow a magnum filter it will help clear up the water faster. You may have to clean the filter every few hours because it will plug up. Its going to be filtering very fine silt and detritus that plugs the filter pores quickly.

Have some extra water made up before you make the move so it is readily available. Plan on doing a lot of water changes for the first couple of weeks while it goes through the mini cycle. I run carbon, phosphate absorber, and skim as hard as I can. Expect an algae bloom a couple of weeks down the road. Phosphate absorber and a heavily stocked clean up crew should minimize that. Wait until you start to see the bloom to add the clean up crew.

I used 30 gal. plastic drums to move rock and water. They were heavy, but still light enough that two strong men could load them in a Uhaul trailer. I used salt buckets for the sand. You can use styrofoam ice chests that an LFS will give you but expect them to leak. I used heavy duty trash bags as a liner for them to prevent them from leaking.

Hope that helps.

[Jynxgirl]

More experienced folks will probably chime in but one thing I wish I had done when I got my 135 moving it only an hour was to have a 20 gallon tank up and ready with similar water perimeters that you are moving to be able to put the fish into once we arrived. I think that would have been alot less stress on my fish.

I also don't know how everyone else moves them but coolers worked pretty good. I was able to move most of the water pretty much and then put a few pieces of rock in each cooler. We utilized two trucks though. The fish went into the coolers as well. That worked pretty well.

[GaryP]

I had a 105 qt. icechest that I was able to keep my fish in until I had the tank up and running. I put a maxijet and an air pump in it. That seemed to work well.

[BIGBIRD123]

What you need to do is try and save as much of the original water you can. This will help with the transition. I moved my 135g about 750 from Miss. and only thing I lost was one small fish that jumped and got caught in the handle of the trash can. I saved 100g of the original water and had no mini-cycle. It was as if I did a 25% water change...no problem.

Steve

[blueboy]

deffinately a good idea to have a seperate tank to keep the fish in for awhile. if you need 5 gallon buckets, i have MANY that i could lend you, if you don't mind coming and getting them.

[AustinVines]

You guys are great. Thanks a lot! I will need a qt tank anyway so a 20g will be a good idea. It comes with a Precision Marine HOT skimmer that I may be able to outfit on the QT tank. Blue, I will definitely consider coming by your place for the buckets.

It is a shallow sand bed and I will probably leave discard most of it except for maybe a cup or two to seed the new setup. As for the ice chests, do the trash bags make a suitable liner for them? Would you put fish in them? I think it would smother them but that is probably b/c water+plastic= me smothering :)

Garyp- what is this battery powered air pump you are talking about? Not like what you'd fill a bike tire with is it? I will have about two weeks to plan it so that should work. I will pick your brains as we go along, if you don't mind.

Thanks!

[truck0000]

Dont mean to high jack your thread but I to have a question about moving. I was going to leave my 4 inch sand bed in the tank while I moved it. I didnt want to disturb the sand bed. When i moved i was going to add 2 more inches of sand to my exsiting bed any thoughts on this?
Thanks, Rob

[SGTDirk]

I just moved down from Washington DC 1684 miles in 4 days. The temp outside when we left was in the uper 30s. I understand the dillem you are going through. All I can tell you is how I did it. And hope it helps.

I had a 50 gal reef tank. So what I did was ought a 24G nano cube (Which is now a mini reef set up in the living room). Put an inverter in the car to run the filter, lights, and 2 300W heaters. We sealed the top of the tank with reynolds press and stick plastic wrap. When we stopped at night I ran an extension cord to the hotel room, so I wouldn't run down the battery. I transfered everything except some of the sand and live rock into the nano. That was transfered into 5 gal buckets. We made the trip. and the temp in the tank worried me. On some nights the temp dropped to 69 f. But over all we made the trip and didn't loose anything. We did have some minor water leaking, but over 1600 miles I can't complain.

I doubt that you are making this long of a trip, but hopefully you can take pieces from my trip to help you out.

Oh and those air pumps talked about before, they are in the fishing area of Wal-Mart. They are used in minnow buckets to keep them alive.

[GaryP]

The air pump that I was referring to is used for keeping bait alive. Its basically just a battery powered air pump like FW people use on their tanks.

Rob, I think you will find that 4" of wet sand plus the tank is VERY heavy. I just use a dust pan to scoop it up and put it into buckets. I use moving a tank as an opportunity to clean the sand anyway. If its been in place for more then a year or two its pretty full of detritus and waste. There are a lot of nutrients trapped in the sand. Disturbing the sand bed by moving the tank releases a lot of the nutrients.

Like I said, I like to wash the sand when I move the tank. Just save some to reseed it and wash the rest of it with a garden hose. I think you will be surprised how much brown silt you will wash out of it.