Moving a tank to a new home

So I recently bought a house (woohoo!) and I am now thinking about the hardest thing to move from my apartment (the tank) and it has got me thinking on a few ideas but knowing the wealth of knowledge here, I'd like to get some input on this situation.

Here's the basic idea I have:

I have a 46 gallon bow that I need to move into my new house which is about 30 minutes away. What I've been thinking the best way to do this is buy a small 20 gallon tank, and along with my 10 gal hospital tank I'll be able to set up both tanks temporarily and fill them with my DT water. I'll be splitting up the fish and inverts between the temp tanks (I have 5 fish, and 2 inverts).
Then I would drain the DT, putting as much water as possible into buckets to bring over to the house. Put all the rocks, in buckets as well and then transport the empty DT to the house, and then fill it back up with the DT water and some clean water as well. Once the DT is all setup, take the fish out of the temp tanks and move them into the DT again.

Well that's my idea and I think it will work, but I was wondering if anyone had any better ideas for when moving a tank? Also for the percent of DT water I should put back in, could I do a 50% water change then without killing my cycle or harming the fish if the temp/salinity was similar? I usually do 10-gallon water changes every other week so it would be effectively doubling that.


Btw I have no corals, this is a FOWLR tank.

Thanks!

 

You have a good plan. Important thing is to remove as much water as possible before moving the tank so that the sand doesn't slosh around much. Depending on how long the tank has been set up & how deep the sand bed you could end up releasing some toxic material. Keep the rocks wet by covering with wet paper or towels to keep die off to a minimum.
You can easily do a 50% water change just be sure that temperature & salinity are the same.
I've moved my tank 3 times in 3 years with little or no problems.

 

good luck, I just moved like 5 minutes away and almost lost everything due to a nitrite spike. I used 100% old tank water, live rock was the same, and I didn't even touch the old sand bed. everything was moved into a new tank setup I had waiting and honestly i still dont know how it happened. hope everything goes better for you!

~Will.

 

I have a better idea. how about you buy about say a 90 gallon tank, set it up in your new home, then move across everything.;D

 

lol kss I was thinking that actually. I have some extra cash that I could do that, but I'm actually planning to build a 75 or 90g tank soon but I wanted to make it an in-wall display and if I were to buy that tank now, I would have to also buy a stand. Probably not too much of a nuance there, but then I would also have to move the tank again when putting it into the wall. I'm probably going to end up buying a new 75/90g tank and just take my time setting it up from scratch than rushing it instead of putting everything in there from the get go.

Now I do have a kicker to add (I'm going to get yelled at!) and would love some input on this:

- When I first started this tank about 7 months ago, I used gravel :-X. I'm regretting that now because of all the work cleaning the gravel. And I think I want to switch to sand. Is it as easy as just removing all the gravel and then using live sand in its place? I would prefer a deep sand bed so I don't have to dig into it anymore with the vacuum, its just my gravel has soooo much life in it now that I kind of feel bad pretty much killing everything off.

Should I drop the gravel for sand? And if I do, is it bad to add a new sand bed to a tank you've just moved?

 

I would get the live sand. Your removing part of your bio-filter but then again the sand you put in will have life anyway. Also you wont have to worry about cleaning it. I would say the biggest thing will be your copepod population will be temporarily reduced.

I would say if your going to switch to live sand, now is the perfect time to do it.

 

It would be better to be able to take your time.
As far as the sand, you don't need to use live sand, lots of people feel this is a rip off, especially if you have live rock already. the sand will be live eventually. you can get a nice, dry argonite sand for a lot less and have the outcome.
About the process I'm not too sure, but it shouldn't be too hard since you wouldn't have any livestock in the tank. The main issue i think would be any trapped stuff getting into the water. I would take out as much water first then tamper with the gravel. then add water, rock then sand.

 

Sounds good. Thank you! I'll post an update when I get closer to move. I'm planning to move the tank around mid May.

 

Not a good thing to remove all the substrate at once. If you intend to switch to sand replace about 20-25% @ a time waitng a couple weeks each time for the sand to populate with bacteria.

 

I'm not sure what area you live in, but have you asked around LFS to see if there are any professional tank service guys that move tanks?

In my case, I found a well recommended guy for $500. That includes all the equipment, a helper for him, and two trucks.