how to move

[SigEpRudy]

I am supposed to purchase and move a 75 gallon cichlid tank and stand this weekend. Found a craigslist posting for full tank and fluval 304 with breeding fish for $100. Have to grab it.

How do I move it? I have a mini van with 5 ft flat bed and a 14 year old wrestler. I need to know how to transport the fish 20 miles or so? There are 3 tanks to choose from and all have breeding pairs in them with multiple fry. I doubt I can net them all. Can we drain 60% or so of the water and transport in the tank?

 

[eric1514]

Get some ice chests; buy or borrow. Fill them half up with water from the aquarium and catch as many fish as you can. You're going to have drain a heck of a lot more than 60% of the water so catching all the fish shouldn't be a problem. If you have more than a couple inches of water in that tank when you try to move it, you might break it.

Save as much of the water as you can, but don't overfill the ice chests. They'll slosh and spill out fish if they're too full. But try and save some water in plastic garbage cans. The more you save, the less you will stress the fish and the more good bacteria you will have. 20 miles is not very far so don't worry about air pumps and heaters. Just get the tank where it needs to be as quickly as you can, dump back in as much of the old water as you can and everything should be OK.

Many good lucks,
Eric

 

[Mumma.of.two]

You don't need to save heaps of water. Just enough to move the fish in. You can acclimate them to the new water when the tanks up and running again. What you need to make sure is that the filter media stays wet. That's where the majority of the bacteria will be. The amount in the water is negligible.

 

[Mokrytzki]

I would recommend saving as much water as possible as to avoid a tank "cycle". You can buy 5 gallon pails at Home Depot or similar places. 10-15 of this would do the trick. And they are reasonable weight to transport.

 

[Mumma.of.two]

There really is no need to save that much water. The bacteria affix themselves to surfaces in the tank. The majority in the filter media, then the substrate, then decor and a small amount on the glass. There really isn't a substantial amount just floating about in the water. If your water is completely different to that of the tank a long drip acclimate will be fine when reintroducing the fish to the tank with new conditioned, warmed water.