Moving Cross Country

rlablan

Active Member
omg... I will dread the day I have to move.... What a crazy thing to think about! I hope everything goes well... I'll be tagging along to see how this turns out.
Great thread to post!
 

geirs2

New Member
I'm the AZ Fish Guy's dad and I took the trip with him. He's been busy getting settled in his new home and job. I don't want to tell you what happened, but I will tell him that all his friends from Saltwaterfish.com want to know how the trip went.
 

phxfishguy

Member
Sorry it has been so long since I last logged on. As you can imagine, moving cross country has been quite the fiasco.

So I loaded the fish and corals in the coolers Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning, we loaded it all in the car and left around 6 AM. The aerators worked brilliantly.
I only had to change the batteries once, on Thursday night. We left the coolers in the car all night both nights and the night in Texas got down into the 50's. The water in the coolers stayed in the mid-70's the whole trip. We arrived in Grand Rapids on Friday afternoon and unloaded the car, but because I had to close on the house and go buy a new 75 gallon temporary tank, everything stayed in the coolers until Saturday.
So, all in all, everything was in the coolers from Tuesday afternoon until Saturday morning.
Now, for the best part...EVERYTHING MADE IT!

There was one harrowing night, where a hole I made in the crate let all of the bioballs into my Vlamingi's cage, but he was ok, although not too happy.

Now, for the sad part. Saturday night, after the tank was all set up (protein skimmer, Fluval FX5, heater, lights, etc.), the fish were settled in and had their first meal in 5 days. So we went out to dinner. When we got back, my dad noticed that the angel was dead (he was an extremely healthy fish).
In the time, I got him out, I started noticing that some of the other fish were not doing so well. They started dropping like flies. We tested everything, but all readings were normal. We added new water to try and help. After losing some more fish
, the tank made a turn for the positive, and the other fish started to recover.
All in all, I lost a Lamarck's Angel, a Powder Brown Tang, a Yellow-Eye Tang, a Coral Banded Shrimp (one of a pair), and a pair of Anthias.

That was over 3 weeks ago. The good news is that everything else is doing great. All of the rest of the fish are healthy and the corals have all opened back up.

So it seems that I got down the move part. I'm not really sure what happened that night that I lost the fish after I got here. It almost seemed like the tank went through a mini-cycle, fast enough that I didn't catch any abnormal readings. Whatever it was, definitely stressed out the entire tank. I think that if I hadn't added some new water, it might have been worse.

Thanks for all of the support. I definitely owe you all some pictures, which I will post as soon as I find my camera. I took some of the coolers packed up before we left and I'll take some of my temporary setup.
 

bulldog123

Member
I cant believe we wasnt your first prioritiy
. Sorry for the lose but glad to here some made it. What a trip that had to be.
 

lil.guppy

Active Member
YEA your back! I am so glad to hear the coral made it!
Did you put your heater in the coolers at all during the trip? Did you change any water and add fresh during the trip? Or did you just keep the lids on the whole time?
 

mr&mrs.o

Member
Originally Posted by lil.guppy
http:///forum/post/3121175
YEA your back! I am so glad to hear the coral made it!
Did you put your heater in the coolers at all during the trip? Did you change any water and add fresh during the trip? Or did you just keep the lids on the whole time?
+1 Definitely wanna know!
So very glad to hear that everything made it on the journey! That's an awesome accomplishment. I'm sorry about your losses after though!
Good luck with everything in your new home and can't wait to see the pics.
Now we all know it CAN be done!
 

phxfishguy

Member
Originally Posted by lil.guppy
http:///forum/post/3121175
YEA your back! I am so glad to hear the coral made it!
Did you put your heater in the coolers at all during the trip? Did you change any water and add fresh during the trip? Or did you just keep the lids on the whole time?
No, I ended up not needing the heaters, although I did have them ready. I ended up not changing any of the water during the trip. I did bring a 44 gallon garbage pail filled with new water, which I also ended up putting the rest of my live rock in. However, I didn't have an extra aerator for it since I ended up using 2 on the fish. So the water was stagnant and didn't smell good, so I left it alone and then cycled all of the live rock again which are still sitting in a kiddie pool in my garage with a pump on it.
So yes, I just kept the lids on the whole time, peeking in once in a while to see if everything was ok.
I did have my 2 starfish in separate containers, but my brittle made an escape. He turned out fine though, hiding in the rocks and corals in the cooler.
 

phxfishguy

Member
Originally Posted by Marchingbandjs
http:///forum/post/3120982
Ya, why werent we first lol... where do you wanna go from here with the tank.. or are you just gonna worry about the house..
I'm still debating about the future of the tank. I really want to upgrade and it would be nice to do it while everything is in transition rather than setting up the 150 and moving it all again in the future. I also have a grand vision of building the tank into the wall in the basement, but I need to think it all through and see where my finances settle out.
 
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