moving tank for first time

[runamukus]

Okay, I'm going to be moving out of an apartment and into a HOUSE in a few months! (my first house so I'm excited) Now what would be a good step by step way of moving a tank? I have fish and things like colts, shrooms, zoos and star polyps. What I am thinking, in order to move all my little creatures without hurting them is to break it down into steps. First I would bag everything in seperate bags, I've saved all my bags from LFS purchases of snails and such. Then I would drain most of the water into 5 gallon jugs until the water is about an inch or two above the sand bed. I would arrange the live rock so that they will not fall over as I move the tank (its only a 29 gallon) I would transport the tank to its new home (HOME! ^_^ )then place the water back into the tank. I would anticipate it to be stirred up a bit, hopefully not too much - run some tests to see if everthing is okay then slowly start putting things back. My biggest fear is everything will be stirred up too much and the tank will need to go through another cycle...and I don't know how long fish/corals can live in a bag. It scares me :o any advice? Does it sound like I have it half way figured out or am I going to be causing too much harm to my little friends? How would you move your tank? What is the biggest mistakes that can be made? What would help make the move successful? Thank you for your input(s)!

[Magneto]

If it isnt a long move I had good luck with using ice chests. Could keep things in water the maximum amount of time and even throw in a power head once we got to the site. Granted I only moved 10 min away. The only thing that died on my move was a damsel that hid in the rock work.

And grats on your first home. It's a cool feeling. Next thing you know you will be planning to take out walls and surround the place in fish tanks.

[CD]

I agree with Magneto - ice chests and 5G buckets would be MUCH better than using bags! Keep fish in the ice chest - large enough that they have some room (how many and what type of fish do you have, btw?) and like corals in each bucket (like zoas together in one, shrooms and GSP in another, etc.). Make sure you have some "newer" SW made up (having been mixing for at least 24hrs.) as some of the tank water that you are using in these buckets and ice chests will have to be thrown out...especially the ones with the fish and leather corals (fish are gonna poop and leathers are going to stress and foul the water). Don't know what your move date is, but if it's still warm, I would recommend having fans blowing across the buckets or heaters if it's gotten cold as temp. swings will be another important factor in the survival rate. Best of luck, and...

Congrats on the move! ;)

W.

[AlexKilpatrick]

Remember that corals can live in a *tiny* bag for 24+ hours when shipped, with major temp variations, and typically do pretty well. What you will be doing is a lot less stressful than that, especially if you use buckets.

[GaryP]

Moving the sand bed is going to put a lot of nutrients back into the water. Its not a big problem but I would suggest you plan for it. You're tank may go through a mini-cycle like what happened when the tank is new. It can be handled by frequent, large water changes, aggressive skimming, running carbon, and running phosphate absorber. I usually plan on stocking up my herbivores a few weeks after the move to nip an algae bloom in the bud.