moving..

cowfishrule

cowfishrule

Active Member
i just sold my house, and am moving on 11/22. its not the moving thats bothering, its moving my tank. i know that there are a few threads on here about moving tanks, and i will at least skim through them. luckily, i only have a biocube 14. 3- 5gal buckets moves everything.
im wondering if, at this point, i should invest in new bag of live sand. the sand i have is over 4 years old, and im sure my sand sifting stars back in the day cleaned out any goodness. 1 bag is more than i would need to line the bottom of my tank, and since im going to be emptying it, why not?
thoughts?
 
m0nk

m0nk

Active Member
Originally Posted by COWFISHRULE
http:///forum/post/2803200
i just sold my house, and am moving on 11/22. its not the moving thats bothering, its moving my tank. i know that there are a few threads on here about moving tanks, and i will at least skim through them. luckily, i only have a biocube 14. 3- 5gal buckets moves everything.
im wondering if, at this point, i should invest in new bag of live sand. the sand i have is over 4 years old, and im sure my sand sifting stars back in the day cleaned out any goodness. 1 bag is more than i would need to line the bottom of my tank, and since im going to be emptying it, why not?
thoughts?
That's up to you, but when I moved my 12g nano 1 1/2 years ago I kept the sand (it had been in the tank about 1 year). It's pretty easy to do the move, just make sure you have some mixed/heated water when you get to the new place.
Here's what I did (hope it helps):
Put some of the water in a 5g bucket with the LR, put more in another 5g bucket with the coral that's not attached to rocks, and include the fish and inverts. Make sure there's enough water to cover the sand and pitch the rest. Then at the new place, put in live rock, coral, fish, water up to 2/3 the height of the tank and fill the rest with new/clean water.
Best of luck; it's no fun, but when it's over you'll feel a whole lot better.
 
gmann1139

gmann1139

Active Member
I moved my cube without even emptying it completely. I just took 5 gallons of water out, plus the water for the fish, and the heater, because its glass. Moved it, and put everything back together. I even re-acclimated the fish, then dumped the water right back in.
The only negative I noticed was a big drop in my pod population, but since nothing was eating them anyway, it wasn't a big negative.
 
cowfishrule

cowfishrule

Active Member
ive decided to go with a new 10lb bag of sand. my sand is very old, and has probably been wiped clean by the sand sifting star that i used to have years ago.
ill drain the tank and scoop out all the sand.
i'll do the move, and put the new sand in the tank before i refill it.
ill also be able to give my rocks the well deserved scrubbing that they need, and redo the aquascaping. i seem to be slowly winning the war against cyano. hopefully with this move, it'll be normandy beach for me.
this will also give me time to donate my yellow watchman that i've wanted to, but never got around to.
maybe... just maybe then we'll see a shot of my tank.
 
cowfishrule

cowfishrule

Active Member
so, the move went mad well.
i drained 5 gal into one bucket. put all the corals and fish into that bucket. sealed it, put it on the side.
i then removed all the rock, and put it in the 2nd bucket. drained the remainder of the water into that bucket. sealed it, done.
i scooped out as much of the sand as possible. removed equip, loaded into truck. buckets went last, and we hit the road.
20 min later, we arrived at our temp house. brought the buckets in. set up the tank, and gave it a good scraping on the glass. put in new 10lb bag of sand. placed rock back in tank, re-working the aquascaping and eliminating 1 of the large pieces and several of the smaller ones. water in the rock bucket went back into the tank. gave that a couple of minutes to settle as i set up the equip. put fish into tank, and put corals into tank. put in balance of 5 gals of old tank water. topped off with 1 gal of distilled water (all i had avail at 9pm).
turned tank on.. tank read 64degrees (normally 81). corals were closed up, and fish were lethargic, probably from the shock of the cold water.
by morning, everyone was good as new. tank has never looked better.
yay.
no losses.
 
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