Moving small tank-- Advice please!

[zman676]

I have a 20 gallon reef tank that I will have to move from Athens to Alpharetta in May. The drive is like an hour and 15 minutes.

Should I just take everything out, then set up the tank in Alpharetta with the same rock, sand, and water and put the corals and fish right back in. Or, should I put all my livestock in a somebody's tank for a week or so after the move?

My thought would be that the 2-3 hours that things will be out of the tank will not be sufficient to cause a new cycle to happen, but I am by no means an expert. I plan on transfering the live rock in buckets with tank water and the livestock in bags/tupperware of tank water in a cooler to maintain temp. Anybody with some knowledge is welcome to lay it on me, because I have to do this again in August when I move to med school. Thanks.

~Zach

 

[george]

If you can get a bigger cooler, put the rock in water in the cooler. I suggest a garbage bag as a liner, unless you don't care about the cooler.

Bring made up, correct temp water with you in a cooler or jugs you wrap in a blanket. It's hard to have enough water to keep the fish, corals, rock, and sand under water when breaking down a tank. Borrow/buy water jugs (and water) from LFS if needed.

You want to try to keep as much of the tank in water and stable temp as possible.

Be sure to have about 50% mixed saltwater ready to go at the far end to make up for spillage. Some of it can be used for the transport makeup water.

Might seem excessive, but nothing sucks more than getting it all back and finding that you lost enough water in transit that you caused die-off on the rock or you can't fill the tank at the destination with enough water to run the pumps/skimmer/etc.

 

[wbholwell]

George's advice sounds good. Be sure not to disturb the sand bed, though, and keep it wet, of course. When I was a student in Athens, I moved my 30 gallon many, many times. I always set it up, sans fish & coral, for a day or two until I was sure the water parameters were fine. In the meantime my livestock was kept in a cooler w/ a HOB filter.