suggestions on moving tank

[jmhartney]

I have a 72 gallon bowfront reef that has been running for 2.5 years. Fish wise I have, one-spot fox face, ocellaris clown, melarinus wrasse, banggai cardinal, mardarin, flame angel, orange spotted goby, blue green chromis, midas goby. Invert wise I have a scarlet cleaner shrimp and a serpent starfish and assorted snails and crabs. I also have a handful of soft corals, zoo's and some colt coral. I have a fair amount of live rock and probably 3-4 inch deep sand bed. We are getting hardwood floors installed on our first floor so I have to move my setup to the basement for at least a week. This is my first saltwater tank and I have never had to move one before. This is my plan right now but I am open to any suggestions.
1. I have been scooping out a couple of cups of sand every day. for the last two weeks. I hope to have most of the sand out before I start the move on Saturday.
2. The day of the move. move 1/2 the water and all the live rock to a series of storage containers in the basement.
3. Catch all the live stock and move then into one of the storage containers.
4. Fully drain the fish tank and remove the remaining sand.
5. Set up the tank in the basement and add back the water and the live stock.
6. The tank will have to be set up in the basement at least a week but could go much longer if that would be safer. (Is there any advantage to waiting a couple of weeks before transferring everything back up stairs?)
7. Does the sand sifting goby need sand in the tank?. Most of the sand will be dead (it is already starting to smell in the garage. I was just going to keep a minimal amount in the tank before the move. I was going to put this back in the tank when I set it up in the basement. Once the tank is re-established upstairs I would slowly add the dead sand back to the tank over 2 months.
8. Does anyone have suggestions for putting a setup on hardwood floors? Is there anything to put under the stand to stop the inevitable small spills of saltwater from contacting the wood?
Thanks for all your help and suggestions.

 

[ReefCheif]

All I can say is FILTER, FILTER, FILTER, SKIM, SKIM, SKIM. I just re did my 180 and Ive been slowly losing crap over the past week waiting for the tank to re stableize. Problem was killing off the bacterias in the sand bed when I disturbed it and Im basically going through new tank cycle again.

Im losing livestock becuase I didnt expect to have them in the smaller tanks for this long and was only running HOBs on the temp tanks. After loosing all my tangs, my dottie back pair and picassos and my trigger devoloping some type of fungus ive beefed up filtration and carbon and things in the temp tanks seem to be stabilizing. I havnt lost one single coral though, STRANGE!

All Im saying is be very careful and keep a constant eye on things and dont expect to be able to add your live stock back to the tank right away. In fact if the tank only has to be down for a week I wouldnt even bother setting it up in the basement. Move your live stock to their new temporary homes (if using plastic containers be very careful as they can leach harmful chemicals over time), move rock into some type of storage container with plenty of flow and a heater

Your sand sifter will likely need a small bit of sand. When I took my wrasses out of the DT they went crazy for a few days with nothng to bury in, so I took a couple plastic zip lock storage containers, filled them with sand and now all 5 wrasses sleep together in the same 2 sand beds along with the scooter blenny.

Im just cautioning based on my own recent personal experience. I didnt even fully break my tank down or remove the sand, I only drained it 50% and moved the sand to the front of the tank and re did my rock stack, pushed the sand back into place around the rocks, re filled the tank and started everything back up. This was 2 weeks ago and nitrates are still through the roof. I think youve got the right idea, just make sure your ready if anything goes wrong with moving your livestock around and re setting that tank up.

 

[High Plains Reefer]

can they do 1/2 the room then move the tank to the finished half then move it back? use dowel rods or something small to roll the tank on thats what I did in the fish room when we tiled it

 

[Dbarnes]

suggestions on moving tank

Can u buy a temp holding tank and put it in the basement a few weeks ahead of time and get it stabilized, equipment like skimmers and such can be borrowed from other reefers to get it going, then it's just a simple transfer. Every tank move I have seen has suffered loss of some kind so it's gonna be tough but If it were me I would setup a different tank ahead of time. It also gives you the ability to put your system back together slowly and modify things that have bothered you in the past

 

[ReefCheif]

Disregard my previous post. My issues had nothing to do with re doing the tank, my issues had to do with a defective test kit! My tank is fine and ready for me to start adding live stock back into it.

 

[High Plains Reefer]

Disregard my previous post. My issues had nothing to do with re doing the tank, my issues had to do with a defective test kit! My tank is fine and ready for me to start adding live stock back into it.

Wow I have discovered this weekend my alk test kit was giving inaccurate readings too lost a oregon tort and a tyree red dragon

 

[ReefCheif]

Wow I have discovered this weekend my alk test kit was giving inaccurate readings too lost a oregon tort and a tyree red dragon

What brand is yours? Mine is Red Sea and Im very un happy. Kit is less than 4 months old.

 

[reeferpueblo]

I haven't had 2 move a tank in a while but i have upgraded 2 times in the last year . from 40b to 100 g then to a 200g. had no losses in coral or fish. i clean my sand and added sand so had dead sand bed both times. i just made sure to keep all my live rock in huge tubs and used air pumps and power heads to keep water moving and oxygenated also kept fish with the live rock to keep the rock live and to keep the bacteria live also heaters 2 keep temp good for fish and corals. the live rock usually has enough bacteria to handle the bio loads just wouldn't add anything new for about a month, i didn't even have any spike in my levels at all so seems to me keeping the live rock alive is a huge thing. and belive me in large tanks to do a tear down and move is a huge job last time i did my upgrade started 8am didn't finish till 3 in morning good luck

 

[High Plains Reefer]

my kit was api it may have been left open...

 

[jmhartney]

Everyone,
Thanks for the suggestions and comments. I really don't have the funds to set up a second system, but I did think about this. I have two large 25 gallon containers one for live rock and one for livestock. I have heaters and powerheads for both. I am hoping to only have both the livestock and rock in the temporary containers for 4-5 hours. The process starts this saturday so I will let you know how things go.

 

[GN138]

Any update on this? I have a 75 gallon with 75-80lbs live rock and a 1/2 inch - 1 inch sandbed. Livestock is a Hippo tang (small) and 2 small clowns, a cleaner shrimp, a peppermint shrimp, emerald crab, porcelain crab and 10 snails or so. I also have a frogspawn, some zoas and mushrooms and a GSP. I want to move my tank from my front office area (hot in summer and tons of light to a smaller room where I am locating my office now.

I was thinking of taking most of the water out with the live rock, critters and corals, then moving the tank with only enough water to cover sandbed. Then slowly add water and filtration, skim like mad then add rocks, corals then fish.

Any thoughts?

 

[jmhartney]

I can tell you what I did. The only thing I lost was a fox face that carpet surfed from the storage containers while I was making the switch.
I kept all the water from the tank and sump (approximately 90 gallons) in a combination of storage containers. I placed the livestock (fish, crabs, cleaner shrimp, snails, corals ect..) with a healthy amount of live rock, in one container with pumps and heater. I then removed the rest of the live rock and sand from the tank. Moved the tank downstairs and then set up the tank again. The animals were probably in the storage container for less than 7 hours. I had fresh carbon and did water changes twice as often as usual for the next couple of week. Never had an spikes in levels. It probably helped that the fox face wasn't in the re-established tank, he was the largest fish and probably cut the bioload significantly.

 

[CRW Reef]

Re: suggestions on moving tank

Yes sir that's how I would do it too and have moved several tanks that same way, beck even several across town that way too.

 

[GN138]

I am thinking over doing all of that EXCEPT leaving the sand with just barely enough water to cover it in the tank as I move it about 25 feet to the new area. Then wait for the water and sand to go back to normal, then add the water and inverts, corals then fish. I think I could do it in 2 hours or so.

 

[ReefCheif]

I can tell you from experience your going to want to change the sand. Your still going to disturb the **** out of the sand, releasing all kinds fo crap you do not want into your tank, and its going to have to cycle again.

I dealt with this a few months back. All I did was re do my rock stack and add some new equipment. I pulled the sand bed forward so I could stack the rock on the glass, this almost crashed my tank. What was supposed to be a few hour project turned into a 3 week ordeal while I was waiting for my tank to cycle again. I was trying ot save money and all and all ended up costing my self more money than I would have spent replacing the sand entirley.

Any agitation to that sand bed is going to release toxins, I dont care how you move it, if your planning on keeping the same sand I would plan on cycling your tank for a bit before adding any livestock to it.