My fish and i are moving 5hours away. need help plz

[phil79]

Hello,

I'm moving from tampa to miami about a 5 hour drive.
i have a 65 gallon saltwater tank with a few triggers, puffer
and a eel. in the tank i have fake coral about 300dollars worth lol
heres what i'm thinkin and you tell me what you think.

i'm going to get 3, 5 gallon buckets in 2 of the buckets i'm going to divide the fish and the 3rd bucket going to place the bio balls and bio wheel to keep wet. in the buckets with the fish i will have 2 bubblers "airstone" and i won't feed them 2 days before the trip cause when they get stress they **** alot and acid in the water will stess the fish even more. now when i get to my new home i will set the tank up go to the new fish store buy permixed saltwater fill the tank up. now heres were i'm lost how do i get the fish back in the tank with out hurting them. how do i bag them up so they can get use to the new temp.

thanks for taking the time out to read this and giving me your feed back

thanks again
phil79
[/code][/b]

 

[beachbumin]

whenever i have moved my tanks i tried to keep as much water as possible and mix it in wiht the new water. this should help acclimate the fish and you can use plastic baggies to reintroduce the fish to their new home just like you would coming from the lfs. good luck!

 

[steve-s]

If you can find an LFS in your area that has actual O2 for shipping, you can bag up the fish and have the LFS fill the bags with proper O2 and add a few drops of an ammonia binder like Amquel or similar. It will be much less mess and hassle in regards to loose water in buckets and the fish will be much easier to acclimate to the tank. This method will also cut down on stress and the high O2 content will help keep the ph in a better range. The bags can then be packed in a styro box to help keep in the temp better.

The rest of the plan seems sound.

Cheers
Steve

 

[doza]

I just did the same kind of move a few months ago (DC to NY). I was moving a 55 gallon. Here's what I did without a single casualty:

I bought 2 rubbermaid bins. They held about 20 gallons a piece I think. I split the LR evenly in between the 2 bins. I put all of the fish in one bin and all of the crabs and snails in the other bin. The bins were just about full with water and I drained the rest out of the tank. I only left enough in the tank to cover the substrate. I put a battery operated pump in each bin and loaded everything (with a lot of help) into a waiting truck. I then drove for 5 hours. When I got to my house, I setup the tank and started putting the water and live rock back in the tank. I tried to take more water from the bin that had the snails than the fish because of the reason you mentioned. I already had an additional batch of saltwater there that I had mixed the week before that I used to top off the tank. They didn't seem overly stressed and I didn't lose any. They are all very happy in my living room right now.

 

[fishfreek]

Take a look at our articles area. We have an article on how to move a freshwater tank. This information will still hold true for a saltwater tank with the exception it will be more important to take the water with you so you can quickly setup the tank again with the old saltwater. This will be less shocking to the fish than mixing up a bunch of new saltwater in advance at the new location.

Make sure the tank is the last thing to go on the truck and is the first thing off and setup.