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Moving


Raamiah

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Hey all!

 

I am moving from near San Diego to Olympia in the next two months and I thought I would get to know you all on here. I have had a reef tank for 8 months now and it has been a great journey and learning experience.

 

I will be selling my livestock off before I go. I don't want to risk the stress on the fish and lose them so I'll just sell them and use the money to get some replacements when I get up to the Northwest.

 

It was the San Diego society that sold me almost all my equipment cheap and allowed me into the hobby so I am looking forward to being a part of this community to learn and contribute.

 

I hope to chat with you all more soon and maybe even meet up in the near future.

 

:D

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Hey welcome to the club. Just thought I would share my experience with you. I moved from L.A. to Portland and brought my tank with me. I did not sell anything, transported it all.

 

What I did was I grabbed a party size cooler and drilled a hole in the top the size of airline. Then I placed a glass casarole dish in center and put all my sand in there. Then placed all frags in the sand, and stacked all my live rock around the dish. From there I filled the cooler to about half way....maybe a tad less and let all my fish free swim in there during the 15 hour drive. I picked up 2 battery powered air pumps and ran those throughout the drive with a small round difuser on the end. I took as much of my water in water containers as I could to minimize new spin up. All I lost was my xenia.....nothing else. All fish and coral made it just fine. I moved tank into apartment, pulled out frags from sand and poured sand in....added water, then coral, then fish....total process was about 2 hours after arrival. Water parameters never crashed...experienced no new cycle....lights came on next day and it was like it never happened.

 

Just a thought for you if you were partial to anything in your tank. Might be able to do something similar and keep it all. You will have about a 3 hour longer drive so you could consider picking up a cheap inverter from your car lighter to wall outlet and run a heater and actual air pump. But I would stick with the ball defuser because you don't want too much air pestering the corals and inverts....the fish on the other hand would love more air. But everything was totally fine the way I did it.

 

But that is just MY experience.

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Thanks everyone.

 

@CA2OR I'll look into possibly moving the fish and coral. I don't have a lot so it might not be much of a hassle but I would also have to convince my wife go along with the plan.

 

@jayR I have been up a few times for interviews and for vacation. I am looking forward to living up here.

 

Do you guys know any fish places near Olympia or any reefers in that area that are on this site??

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Most people on here are in Oregon and Vancouver, WA.

 

There is another reef club that is more for people in the Seattle/Tacoma area. It is www.thepsas.org (puget sound aquarium society). Olympia is almost right in the middle, but probably closer to PSAS.

 

You are more than welcome here, and I think this is a more active community based on the number of posts a day. However, you may find it difficult to drive to Portland (or further south) whenever you want to meet up with someone for a trade or a sale.

 

dsoz

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Does anyone else have any suggestions for moving the tank? I know we can start over but my wife and I love our clowns and tang and corals and want to try to keep everything if we can.

 

Does anyone else have suggestions or tips from their experience that can give us an idea of what we need to take into account for doing this?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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Use a large insulated cooler for the fish. Insulation should keep the water temperature constant for several hours (at least) and close enough for fish comfort for up to a day or two. While you are driving the water movement should be enough to keep the water oxygenated. If you stop, throw a heater and powerhead (maybe even an airstone) in the cooler and it is a "tank on the go."

 

LR can be transported in rubbermaid totes as long as it stays underwater the life on the rock should not die-off and cause a new cycle.

 

Sand I would get new and throw out all but a couple of cups of the old sand. Use the cups of old sand as "starter" cultures for the benthic life.

 

Other options would be to ship corals to someone up here so that they can "babysit" them while you are moving and setting up your new tank.

 

You could stop at someone's house and drop off your livestock for a couple of weeks while you make sure that there is no cycle. Many of us would be willing to hold your fish for a couple of weeks. I know that I have a 2 x 40b prop system that only has two fish in it right now and a couple of fish would not put stress on the system at all for that time. You can come pick them up when you are sure that your system is running properly.

 

dsoz

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  • 1 year later...

Well it's been over a year since I have been on these forums because I never got my tank up and running since I moved to Washington. We recently moved from one house rental to another and I actually pulled the tank out of the garage and put it in my office at work. I'm looking at gradually getting back into the hobby. I hope to be active here and hopefully having a tank up and running in the next few months!

Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions. I ended up selling all the fish and coral which ended up being the best choice given the size of the place we moved into a year ago.

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