move the tank
- Thread starter georgene
- Start date
my way
Active Member
I just did this recently for someone with a 75. You need containers to hold the contents of your tank, water included. I used a spare 55 and lots of buckets. Raise the temp in the house to 75 degrees if you will not be able to re-setup the tank within a few hours. Start draining the tank into your containers leaving room to add your rock and corals. Start with your corals and add them to your containers and arrange them so they won't be damaged. Then add your rock to more of the containers, DON"T put them in with the corals. Drain more water to the containers until you have the water low enough to easily catch your fish and inverts. Put the fish in one container and the inverts in another. Depending on how deep your substrate is leave it in the tank. Now you will need a few extra hands While 2 people held the tank I had 2 others move the stand, then keeping the tank as level as possible move it back to the stand in it's new location. Lay down your new floor and reverse the operation. I did this all in about 4 hours So there was no need to worry about heaters and the filter. If it's going to take a long time to do your floor you will need to hook up your filter so it does'nt starve for oxygen. I have done this with wet/dry'ds by just pumping straight to the filter instead of the tank. If you are using canisters or HOB's nyou will need to hook them up to one of the containers, preferrably the one woth the fish. If your flooring project is going to take more than 1 day I would do what I said but set the tank back up in another room and just repeat the whole process to put it back in the original location.
swishy
Member
I have a 10gal Nano Reef that I move to and from college with me. Granted your tanks are all much larger so you'll have to make everything larger. I usually put the rocks into a cooler, many of them are covered in polyups and mushrooms so I have to place them carfully, sometimes using pieces of plastic to put between them so they dont topple over oranything. I bag up all fish (all 4 of them) and inverts and any corals that i can frag i put into bags, then i put the bags into a cooler to keep the temp stable....load it al up into the car and after a 3 hr drive i set it all up again.....I do this 4 times a year and i have only lost a Pom Pom crab by accidentally crushing him with a rock in the cooler. Granted i have soft corals and hearty fish(mated pair percs, six line wrasse who is moving out soon because he has become agressive and a bi-color blennie), it would be harder with a larger tank with more senseitive species in it. :happyfish