cant hardly wait ( moving 180 gal reef )

Going to be moving in 2.5 weeks . Moving 180 gal reef . Any suggestions, I have moved 94 gal . That took about 8 hours alone. Its full of soft coral. I have a bunch of styro - foam boxes. I will be saving 160 gals of water. Then make new water for the rest. I know the corals will be fine. Not sure how long fish can be in bag . They also will be in styro-foam box also. Dont know if i need heat packs or not any suggestions. Thanks chris003

 

I would see what the weather is going to be like. If needed I would use heat/cold packs. I would also use opaque plastic bags, or put them in a brown paper bag, that will help with the stress on the fish. Good luck.

 

I recently moved and had to move my tank. Although not as large as the tank you are moving, I found ice chests, and rubbermaid totes to be very helpful. Also heaviest duty plastic bags you can find for lining totes and ice chests. It helps prevent water from sloshing out. Some of those 4 wheel furniture dollies really helped because you dont have to carry totes of water and rock just put it on the dollie and wheel it out. As far as corals went I put everything in its own plastic zip-loc bag 1 gallon size, and packed those in ice chests. Had a small tank set up for the fish ahead of time at the new place, they were last out of the tank, moved them to the small tank while unloading and setting up. Transferred them over the follwing day. I didnt lose a single coral or fish. Took as much water as I could and used new for rest. The corals were in the bags for almost 10 hours by the time I was putting them back into the tank.
Best advice is take it slow, there is a lot of work to do but rushing can lead to problems. Have everything you need ahead of time. Dont stress about it. Plan for a long day. Good luck

 

i used 8 - 12 gallon rubbermaids to transport the 125gallons of water from my tank i just moved. worked wonderfully and i was still able to lift and move them around. i placed all the rock and coral in the rubbermaids and insulated the delicate ones with clean towels. i placed all the fish in one rubbermaid with a one small porous rock so they could hide from eachother. all of this took over 8 hrs to move about 50 miles. weather was good but the water did get a little cold. (70 degrees) nut nothing died.

 

thanks for everybodies input

 

good luck. im sure you will be fine. how far are you moving it?

 

Thats the good part 3-miles

 

Deff plan for a long day.... and take it step by step. Oh it may be less stress full to put the fish in a closed bucket instead of bags. then wrap in a blanket to hold the temp from droping along with it will darken the bucket so the fish will not stress as much.. But just a idea...

Take some pic's of the chao's !!

best of luck...

 

k+ i like the idea of the buckets. that way you even get to take more water with you. plus your fish will have a little more room to swim.

 

yea, good idea thanks