Andles DeLa Noche Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 I started a corner tank about 9 months ago and so far have two fish, a mini maxi, a bunch of feather dusters, frogs pawn and lots of live rock. We placed an offer on a house in Snohomish so we are moving from Portland in about a week. I don’t know what to do with the contents and tank. I’ve obviously got some money in it and don’t want anything to die but I fear the neglect and / or stress of a move that far away will kill everything off. How do people move when they have an almost established tank. Also if someone wants to harvest some of the feather dusters I’m cool with that. My anxiety level is through the roof! My assumption is that we will probably downsize the tank or not have one at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geeklet Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 The disposable hand warmers do wonders for keeping things warm on a long drive - You'd essentially pack up your livestock in bags and ideally place them in an insulated container with the warmers, and rock in 5g buckets. You'll likely want new substrate, since stirring it up while getting it out would release excess nutrients. If you're downsizing, you could have saltwater ready to go in your new tank before you move everything (are you making multiple trips, or just one?).... otherwise, it will just take longer to get the water up to the proper temperature once you're there. Seachem Prime could help suppress spikes, and adding some Tim's or Biospira notifying bacteria should help avoid a cycle. Be sure to temp acclimate, if not drip. I'm sure there are some seasoned pros that can add to or correct this lol. Baby woke up, g2g Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burningbaal Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 well...welcome to snohomish county (I'm near Bothell)! I ended up giving away my 90g when I moved from Corvallis in 2012. It was supposed to be on a payment plan, but the person never paid me, so I got shafted. If I had been coming to my own house where I could have set it up, I probably would have just taken all my livestock to a LFS (probably TPA in Salem) and moved my rock in a brute can with everything else dry. Good time for a reset. But I was moving to a 1bed apartment while we figured out what we wanted to do long-term, so I ended up giving it all away free (on accident)...very sad. You can, in theory, bag everything, or put it in smaller vessels for transport, but you need to get them back in a big tank with rock and flow pretty fast afterwards or you're risking ammonia problems. You could try putting them in a rubbermaid with rock and water, but I think it's a recipe for disaster in the back of a box truck on the freeway. You could bag them, put the rock in a big semi-sealed barrel, and the first thing in the new place is to dump them out of bags into the rock/water. the params should be equal except any built-up waste in the bags, so you're probably pretty safe to dump them in without acclimation, but how quickly can you go from bagging livestock to driving 3-5 hours (Traffic) and then getting them out of the bags...Hence why I think I'd just bail on the livestock. I say you ditch the livestock, move all the rock and water to brute cans, dry out all the gear (I'd rinse the sand out thoroughly with a garden hose), and move it. When you get to the new place, stick a major pump in the brute cans to keep the water oxygenated. Once you're settled enough, set up the gear again, move the rock, put the sand in, maybe add a bag of arag-alive or similar, and fill up with clean water. minimal cycle since the rock has been going solid and you can start back in with livestock. that's my $0.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrabbyCrabs Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 I just moved from Portland to Hayden Idaho. I purchased Coleman marine coolers and some of those orange drinking water coolers and saltwater in big buckets. I was able to set up one tank before hand minus rock and sand. This tank got my girlfriends nuvo 20 contents. Bagged coral with half/half old/new water. Put them in one cooler preheated with towels from the dryer. Next I did same with fish except they went in the orange drinking water coolers. Then filled one cooler half with heated old/new saltwater, and put live rock in those. Left about 2 hours later and it was an 8 hour drive( pulling a 16 foot enclosed behind my Tahoe). Gloat acclimated and water acclimated. No losses there. My tank was the following weekend except I moved my tank at the same time with mostly new saltwater and what was in coral/fish bags. All sand was tossed, I meant to keep some but don't know what happened. Both tanks are bare bottom now. I ran into my tahoe overheating with my tank move so that added to the commute time. Was over 100 degrees from the Dalles to spokane. I did lose a few sps but not nearly the loss I was expecting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrabbyCrabs Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 See my post in other thread. I forgot to mention I dosed my tanks with prime before starting the process and added a drop or two to the fish bags. With the weather I don't think hand warmers will do anything but hurt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted August 20, 2019 Share Posted August 20, 2019 Hey all - I merged the two threads on this topic since there was a duplication and it got a bit confusing. Hope that works OK. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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