help moving???

[bielbugs]

I will be moving in 2 weekends. The move is about 20-30 minutes away. I have a 55 gal aquarium. What is everyones advice as to the best way to go about this? Anyone have experience that would like to share thier story and things that you wish you would have known or done??? Thanks!

[cocoa_pleco]

the best thing you can do is leave the tank filled 25%, and get one of those air pumps that run on battery from petsmart.

WARNING, you may lose 25-50% of your stock





I read a story of a guy who did this for a 3h move, and he had a 100g. He lost 50% of his stock

[bielbugs]

wont the tank break?

[cocoa_pleco]

If you get 4 guys, 1 on each end, and 2 in the middle, you should be fine.

Or, if youre worried, put the fish in a bucket, drain the tank, then put the tank in the moving truck, put the fish in the tank then, and that should work

[blue fin]

I will be moving in 2 weekends. The move is about 20-30 minutes away. I have a 55 gal aquarium. What is everyones advice as to the best way to go about this? Anyone have experience that would like to share thier story and things that you wish you would have known or done??? Thanks!
I moved my 75 gallon tank from VA to NJ and lost zero fish.... but there's a catch, you have to save 30-50% of the water,keep the substrate moist, keep the filter moist, don't use tap water to clean almost anything, To transport the fish we got a small mobile fish tank 4gal and all 32 fish went in, drove them here and I immediately set the tank up and put them in, again reusing everything that was in the old setup. What I would recommend you do different than I did was to use only about 40% of the original substrate, put new in the tank first and use the established substrate on top. You could probably get by if you did a really thourough cleaning of the substrate with the python after all of the decorations were removed. Good Luck!!

[Lady Hobbs]

Absolutely empty your tank of everything. Water sloshing back and forth can put pressure on the seams and add extra weight.

What I would do (and have.) Drain most of the water from your tank. Your gravel and filter media has the bacteria and your water has little. (Goes to show why you can do large water changes without a problem.) In buckets, add all the gravel and as much as the crummy water in the bottom of the tank that you can save. Those nasties will get you going again in a hurry at your new home so save as much bottom water as you can.

Set your tank up right away, toss in all that gravel (uncleaned of course) and that nasty water you saved, add your decorations and fill the rest up with clean, undechlorinated water and start your filter going. (You can clean the glass but clean nothing else.) You are good to go.

I moved my tank in different areas of the house in the same manner. Doesn't matter if you move it 20 feet or 20 miles.

[Drumachine09]

When i got my 55, so i didnt have to recyle it, we moved it with 4 inches of water. Im not a large person. I wreslted 112 lbs last year, and im now just about at 120 lbs. But me and the guy i bought it from, moved the tank, with 4 inches of water, and about 75 lbs of gravel with very little trouble.

It would be a good idea to go to a sporting goods store, specifically one like cabelas, basspro, or gandermountain, or other comparitave store and get some of these.

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

[Lady Hobbs]

[Only Registered Users Can See Links.]

This will explain it better.

[kufan]

I'm glad I found this, I'm gonna be moving in 3 weeks, and its a three hour trip, and I've got 2 tanks to move. Glad to see that I'm not the only one going to be doing this. Hopefully all goes well.

KU

[Drumachine09]

I'm glad I found this, I'm gonna be moving in 3 weeks, and its a three hour trip, and I've got 2 tanks to move. Glad to see that I'm not the only one going to be doing this. Hopefully all goes well.

KU



Good luck!

[Lady Hobbs]

For a 3 hour drive and getting your tank set back up, etc, I would put your fish in a cooler/coolers and get some portable air pumps and run oxygen to them. The pumps are cheap......like $10 and run on batteries. If not that, put a double trash bag in a cooler, add your fish and tie the bag near the top. A large bag will hold lots of oxygen if you don't crowd your fish too much. When they ship fish, they fill the bag with oxygen and they figure it's good for the time it takes to ship them.

[Willyleigh]

Try to get your hands on some of the fish bags from the LFS and ask for some polystyrene boxes from them, which the fish are sent to them in.

Empty your tank, catch the fish in the bag, try and get as much air as possible in the bag,don't worry too much about the amount of water, 2-3 inchs is plenty for anything but really tall fish. Seal the bag with lots of air,it should be able to stand on its own.

Put the bags into the polystyrene boxes and rush them over with your nearly empty tank, try to save as much water as possible, in buckets or in trashbags which are in cardboard boxes.

Keep your filter in some water and make sure your gravel stays wet and you shouldn't have a problem.

[bielbugs]

Thank you all so much for the advice and info that you provided. Next Friday is the moving day. Luckily since the move is only 20-30 minutes we are moving only the fish aquarium stuff next Friday to get all that moved and set up at the new place... The following day is the big moving day for everything else. I'm hoping all goes well, I will let everyone know.

[kufan]

For a 3 hour drive and getting your tank set back up, etc, I would put your fish in a cooler/coolers and get some portable air pumps and run oxygen to them. The pumps are cheap......like $10 and run on batteries. If not that, put a double trash bag in a cooler, add your fish and tie the bag near the top. A large bag will hold lots of oxygen if you don't crowd your fish too much. When they ship fish, they fill the bag with oxygen and they figure it's good for the time it takes to ship them.
My plan was to put the two tanks of fish into 5 gallon buckets with lids, cut a hole big enough to put an air tube thru the lid, and use power inverter and plug the air pump into my truck while I was driving. I've already got a box made out to set the buckets in the back seat of my truck and will make sure they are snug in the back of my truck. I was also going to get enough buckets to put most of the water in. Will this be enough, or should I consider bagging the fish and putting the bags in styrofoam boxes?

KU

[bielbugs]

Since my trip isn't very long and I'm hoping that the tear done and setup doesn't take too long, do you thing the fish would be fine without an air pump. While they are in the bucket during the tear down and setup I could aerate the water with my air pump, but will they be ok without one during the 20-30 minute trip?

[Lady Hobbs]

beilbugs, your short time having them like this will be fine.

kufan,

your plan sounds very good. You don't need to cart a bunch of water if you just pick up enough bio spira for your tank. But if you do want that water, just import the worse of the stuff in the gravel. Bacteria is mostly in the gravel and the filters.

[bielbugs]

cool, thanks

I just realized I had a whole lot of typos in that last post, glad I'm a Math teacher. LOL

[bielbugs]

Well, the move happened last Friday. Everything went seemlessly. I had 6 five gal buckets. I used 2 for the gravel and topped it off with water. The other 4 with water from the tank, 1 of which the fish were put in. Other than when the bucket of fish were being transported for 30 minutes, I had the air pump going to that bucket. In total, about 50% maybe a little less of the original tank water was saved and reused.

All of the fish survived and I have added several more!