[swill]

We just moved two aquariums and I thought I would post some things here that I found helpful with the move.

We first moved a 190 gallon custom tank and sump. This tank was being moved into our house from another persons house. The biggest thing that helped with this move was NO SAND!! The previous owner had a no sand bed approach and although I found it difficult to get use to I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm telling you, the day after the move, the tank looked like it had been in my living room for years. The water was clear and the corals looked amazing. We weren't moving too much livestock but bought a used 10 gallon and had it setup and ready in my basement so that is where the livestock lived for the first 24 hours after the move. We used their tank water so there was no need to acclimate them or anything. This was helpful as the day after the move we did some more aquascaping and it was just easier to do knowing there was no fish in the tank to watch out for. We used tupperware bins to move the water and just took our time with everything. The whole tank move from start to finish took 10 hours.

The second tank was a 90 gallon reef, it was being moved from our home to it's new home across town. This one did have a sand bottom and it was being moved later at night so we did not take our time. Something that we did with this tank I think helped, we took a big bucket and filled it with the tank water, then we started to fill the tupperware bins. Once we got down to where the rocks were starting to stick out of the water we started to take the rocks out. We first would take the rock and rinse it off in the bucket of water. we would stick it the bucket and shake it. This allowed any debris to be remove from the rock before we would place it into the tupperware bin full of water. Someone might have a different option on this way of doing it I'm sure but I really think it helped. The bucket water got really dirty after awhile so we dumped it down the drain and filled it again with tank water and continued on with this method. It's almost like you're cleaning your rocks just as you would with your sand. Once we moved the tank and started to put the water and rocks back into the tank we could see that the rinsing method worked as aquascaping was much easier than moves in the past as we could actually see in the tank instead of just murky water. We had planned on doing a water change anyway when we moved it so dumping some of the water was not a big deal. There was some definite murkiness to the water though from disturbing the sand bed. We went to see the tank the next day and you could see the brown dust film on the bottom of the tank. It made me appreciate the NO SAND approach even more. The fish in this tank were put into the tank immediately after the move and they had still not come out from hiding. It's way too stressful for them which is why I used the extra 10 gallon for our new fish.

I hope this info helps you, good luck with the move!!