Moving a 20g Tank. Advice NeededPlease.

[jdlfreedom]

It seems every fish store I ask and every reefer I chat with has a different way/best way to move a tank...

My tank is small just 20g nano about 25lbs of live rock two clowns a royal gamma and a jaw fish.

Im ok with using the water from the tank and the whole 5g pail idea. I'm just not sure what to do with the sand...

move it and reuse it...

move, rinse reuse it

start up the tank with new live sand.

its a bout 2in of crushed live coral substrate now..

any input?

Thanks in advance!

[Oxymoron]

How long has the sand been in use in your 20 gal?

[Maverick00]

Ive moved my 33 gallon twice. Put the livestock/coral in 5 gallon buckets with part of the top cut off. The rock i put in rubbermaid containers with tank water as well. I siphoned out what i could out of the tank and left the sand at the bottom with maybe 1/2 inch of water or something. Both times i moved the tank it was under a 30km distance but seemed to work great.

[Bblinks]

I did a 72 gallon tank. It wasnt hard but took a long time. First I got five rubbermate containers from Walmart. Separated LR, coral, tank water, and fish into different containers and with the help of few friend drove the almost empty tank with only sand left over to the new place. Then another 4 trips back and forth till all the containers were moved. Once the tank has settle in it's new location, I started to refill the previously saved tank water follow by the LR. Mean while I had a power head circulating in each of the coral and fish container just to keep the oxygen level up. I did fill the rest of the tank up with so premade new tank water in the new place and raised the temperature to the proper level, finally the rest of the coral and fish went back in. I have done this a few times, it seems to work good. Never really lost anything from the transport. Now if you want to talk about broken equipment during a move, that is a different story.

If I were you I would do a partial water change when you set up the tank in the new location so you don't need to carry any extra unnecessary weight, make sure extra fresh saltwater is premixed and ready to go just incase of a mishap. Be careful with equipment and make sure you don't use new sand if you don't have to and don't rinse out your tank or any other biological filter material. 20 gallon tank move should be easy breeze. :mrgreen:

[jdlfreedom]

Thanks for sharing your experiences with me.

The sand has been in use for just over 14 months now.