Moving tank long distance?

[ScottM]

I am tanking an established tank to dc this week.

pack up all the fish corals just as you get them delivered from an online store. Heat packs, Styrofoam coolers and Bags.

as for the rock, wrap in wet newspaper and put it in a cooler too.

the water and sand bed are the tricky part.

pick up a pannel of insulation from Home depot, they are pretty cheap.
cut it to box around the tank.
put heat packs on the bottom under the tank, Saranwrap the tank itself (keeps the low tide smell down) and drop in a heater on a 12v Power inverter.

coolers from your LFS are FREE. they always get too many
Insulation foam ~15.00
40 hand warmers at cosco 17.00
Bags ~10.00
Styro - break up a cooler for this so free for that.
tape to seal up the tank insulation ~4.00
Saranwrap ~4.00
Newspaper free - take your neighbors, i know you live in a condo
300w Power inverter ~ 30.00 at any local depot store

But its certainly a PIA.

if your really moving, i bet a LFS would hold stuff for you and a local could sip it to you when ready.

 

[JamisonSmith]

Moving

Armando,

I moved up to north of Boston from north FL in one trip and everything survived.

I placed the majority of live rock in a large, clean rubbermaid can that I have just for water changes and otehr misc. aquarium stuff. I covered the live rock with wet newspapers and a little (maybe 5 gallons) of aquarium water in the bottom of the can.

I took as much of my water and filled 5 gal buckets. I added the fish to one (only had 3 at the time in a 65 gallon) bucket. I added the corals to two other buckets.

I did run an air pump via an inverter on the buckets but forgot about the heaters and the water was freezing cold when I got here in early April of this year. Fortunately, I slowly raised the temperature back up to where it needed to be and everything was fine. It was so cold that my clowns were half-swimming, half floating upside down, I really thought that I was going to lose them.

Overall, it was a BIG pain, but so are a lot of things.

Good luck, if and when you decide to move away to somewhere warm.

Jamison

 

[Armando]

Jamison which vehicle did you use for this? Van? Truck?

 

[Armando]

if your really moving, i bet a LFS would hold stuff for you and a local could sip it to you when ready.

Cool. I'll leave my stuff with Reefdomlive and they'll ship it for me later

 

[joefitz]

Armando, I think the answer is obvious. Think about how good you feel giving all your livestock away to BRS members. Talk about good karma and warm fuzzies and all... Heck, I'd even offer to help out and accept an item or two myself. ;-)

 

[Armando]

OK joefitz I'll give you FREE Xenia and Star Polyps

 

[JamisonSmith]

Moving

Armando,

On that trip I was in my expedition towing a trailer. The buckets were in the back of my truck so they should have been fairly consistent for temperature, but it didn't work out that way.