Moving soon...

I have moved many setups. More recently, I moved all of the rock, sand and stock from BigD's tank 3 weeks ago to a temp tank in my house, then the past weekend moved it all into Taki. Before that I moved all the stock from Grove & Platt to my house and then had to tear that tank down 3 days later to fix the stand and re-set it up again, and moved it all again 6 months later and have had minimal losses, most of the time none.



I do find that running an algae scrubber (with a mature/established screen) is extremely beneficial after the move, as it will quite literally suck up ammonia like a mop/sponge like no other media can. I have gone as long as a week before re-installing the algae scrubber though, so keeping the LR submerged is equally important IMO.


I have Brute cans (2x44g, 1x32g, 1x20g) and ~30x 5g buckets. If you do not have a tank to move everything to (meaning, you are tearing down your system, moving it, and setting up the same system) then here is the order you need to go in:

• Make up new water matched to salinity, about 50% of your tank volume.
• Pull all removable corals and put into small containers or buckets. Fill with half tank water, half makeup water.
• Stop filtration, drain sump into 5g buckets about 1/2 full
• Drain enough clean tank water into 5g buckets about 1g worth per bucket for fish. Fish don't need much water. Air exchange at surface is adequate.
• Start pulling rocks out. Once a bucket has enough rock in it, fill with make-up water. Basically you are acclimating the rock, like doing a PWC.
• Catch the fish and put into the fish buckets. Add 1/2 gal of makeup water immediately. Add 1/2 gallon of makeup water periodically. Leave lids partially off until you actually move them.
• Drain rest of tank water in to buckets until you have a few inches of water over the sand bed. Maybe 4-6". The crud in the water will settle out during the move and you can re-use the water.
• This part is gonna stink. Scoop the sand out with a dustpan. It doesn't hurt to give the sand a good mix before doing this to release all the crud. you can use a kitty little scoop too, or drill holes in the dustpan to let the water out. Put sand into buckets.
• Drain tank and rinse out, pack it all up and move.
• Set up tank and plumbing in new location
• Add base level of rock, or all of it, if you can act quickly. Occasionally dump a cupful of water over the rocks.
• Add sand.
• Add enough water (from the rock buckets) to cover the rock as you build up the structure.
• Fill tank with existing tank water and makeup water if you have to.
• Start filtration
• Run carbon and skimmer and filter socks.
• Start acclimating fish and to some extent, corals. All water temp should have dropped roughly the same amount and this is fine as long as you bring the temp back up when everything is back in the tank together.
• Add fish and corals.
• Clean up all the nasty buckets and stuff
• Take a long, hot shower. You're gonna need it.

 

Also if you are really worried about ammonia, just get a bottle of Seachem Prime. Saltys don't use it much but for FW detox of tap water a little of that goes a looooong way - one capful for 200g. It locks up ammonia so that it is not harmful to livestock but is still bio-available for bacteria. I have read it is only a temporary effect though, meaning over time the ammonia will be released. Also your test kit will still show ammonia even though it's not dangerous.

Also there is a relationship between pH and ammonia / ammonium, here is a great article that explains this simply http://www.aquaworldaquarium.com/Articles/TonyGriffitts/Ammonia.htm which is what 2Tankz was referring to. No need to bubble or keep heated. I moved all those fish from BigD's that was 2 hours away without heaters in all the buckets.