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Tank tear down - advice/help/mocking?


albertareef

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Hey all,

The time has come to tear down my current 125 build in preparation of listing our house and moving.  This will include catching and moving my livestock - including 14 fish.  I can do most of this myself except actually moving the tank out of the house (preferably without breaking it) but would be more than happy to entertain ideas, tips, moral support etc. on how best to accomplish this. 

I have a lot of live rock so plan to start by pulling all of that and partially draining the display so that I can actually catch the fish but then will need to keep them alive until I can transport to their temporary holding tank offsite.  Thinking of transporting them in a few lidded buckets for simplicity sake.  I only have. a few live coral at this point (don't ask) so will probably cut that off the live rock and re-home ASAP.  Will probably just let the rock dry out and recycle as part of a reboot.  Also have a layer of sand in the display plus a deep sand bed refegium to deal with.

The whole setup (minus the chiller) is located under the stand in my dining room with hard wood floors so keeping the process as spill free as possible is also a priority if anyone as good tricks for that (besides don't drop anything) happy to hear them.  No drains nearby so will either have to bucket brigade or find a long stretch of tubing (20 plus feet) to run out the window.

My window of time is pretty tight so looking at the weekend after this coming one - Sat/Sun 16th/17th to pull this off.

Thanks for any sage advice. 

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Best way is to remove everything. Water you can make a adapter to a hose directly to your pump and out the window.if you are rebooting, id advise to keep At least half the rock live. Sand i usually use my big fish catch net and scoop it up into buckets.live stock,make sure if its a poisonous fish to keep them alone or you may lose everything thats with it( rabbit fish,lions,puffers,urchins) also saving some of the water helps for a reboot. Good luck, its a pain moving.

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Sorry to hear that your tank is coming down but circumstances change and we do our best to adapt and carry on. If you have any older plastic totes unlikely to leach any nastiness into the water, stage them with with aeration and fill part way with system water as you're draining the tank.

1. Pull your live rock with prized inverts and place one rock in each tote for your fishies to hide in/on/under. They'll also provide some biological filtration to mitigate the inevitable NH3 spike from capture and acclimation stress.

2. Monitor temperatures in these totes closely, frequency depending on ambient temps in the house.

3. Have another smaller reservoir of some kind with system water so you can bail-and-replace if needed to maintain temp and proactively manage the aforementioned NH3 bounce.

4. There will be sloshes and spills, so lay down some towels on the floor and consider buying a small tarp to put over them where you're moving animals.

5. Buy some cheap battery powered bait aerators to keep your DO up when your fishies' respiration rates are jacked.

6. As the water level drops, consider using some type of partitions to shrink the capture area. I really like expandable window screens for this, as you can size them to the space quickly and easily, place them and drastically reduce the places where fish can escape to. After you've shrunk the capture area, consider placing an opaque pitcher (or similar vessel) where the fish can get to easily. They'll likely choose the large, dark space and swim in. Then place a net over the opening and voila! Fast and much less stressful for all.

6. Your instincts are spot-on about the lids. A dark place isn't nearly so scary and will help keep respiration rates and NH3 offloading lower.

7. Careful with the tubing if you're reusing the water. If it's new, it'll likely leach out critter-killing chemicals. Pre-soak it or go with older hoses.

8. Good luck with this project, man. PM me with any questions.

Cheers,

Sid

 

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