Moving Day - Tips Appriciated

FITZ7 · Jun 1, 2018

Hello everyone!

I'm going to be moving in 2 weeks and was just curious how some others have handled it. Is it best to put everything in buckets with a heater? Leave the sand in the tank with a bit of water? The tank is 14 gallons so I'm not worried about moving it weight wise but I'm not sure if it's a safe practice for the tank itself. I'll only be moving about 20 minutes away and I plan on breaking it down and setting it back up within an hour or so. Tank is about 2 months old with 5 hermits and 2 snails so I hope this wont de-stabilize the tank and leave them temporally homeless. I will most likely wait a few weeks after the move to add any fish. (Thinking about a purple firefish or maybe a small group of wheeler's shrimp gobies)

Thanks for reading!

lickyricky · Jun 1, 2018

FITZ7 said:
Hello everyone!

I'm going to be moving in 2 weeks and was just curious how some others have handled it. Is it best to put everything in buckets with a heater? Leave the sand in the tank with a bit of water? The tank is 14 gallons so I'm not worried about moving it weight wise but I'm not sure if it's a safe practice for the tank itself. I'll only be moving about 20 minutes away and I plan on breaking it down and setting it back up within an hour or so. Tank is about 2 months old with 5 hermits and 2 snails so I hope this wont de-stabilize the tank and leave them temporally homeless. I will most likely wait a few weeks after the move to add any fish. (Thinking about a purple firefish or maybe a small group of wheeler's shrimp gobies)

Thanks for reading!

You should be good. It’s much easier on a young tank.
Just bag up the few creature you have, drain the water as low as you can, move the tank with sand and some water...keep your rock moist with damp paper towels or in tubs covered with water.
On the other end use all new water. Your sand and rock will help seed the new water with bacteria

Pntbll687 · Jun 1, 2018

It's a young tank so it should be fine.
And you can leave the sand with just a coating of water on it in the tank. That's how I moved my 25g tanks when I moved.
If you read through some threads on moving tanks people often recommend removing the substrate and replacing it. This is because most established tanks will have nutrients and detritus built up in them. You don't need to worry about this since the tank is so young.

I wouldn't even worry about a heater since the move shouldn't take that long. I often have fish/coral in bags longer than an hour just transporting them home.

myaniz24 · Jun 1, 2018

No problem! Brute garbage cans a bubbler with an inverter connect it to your car. It’s what I do.

Haggisman14 · Jun 1, 2018

I moved my 29 gallon biocube back in March. I went to Lowes and picked up 6 5-gallon buckets with lids, drained my water into those buckets, placed my rock (b/c i had corals on them) into the individual buckets, drained the water so that there was just about an inch above the sand, and moved it all. power was off on the tank for about 1.5 hours total, no heaters used in the process. You might not have a ton of life on your rock, but I would suggest keeping them fully submerged to prevent any sort of die off on them.

Lastly, when I put the tank back together, out of the 30 gallons of water, I kept about 20 gallons of the old established water, and replaced 10 gallons with fresh SW.

Didn't have any problems!

FITZ7 · Jun 1, 2018

Thanks for all the help, makes me feel a lot better haha. I was planning on putting the rock in a 5 gal bucket with some of the tank water. I started with 8 lbs dry and 6 lbs live, but the dry has had tons of growth since I started. I just want the move to be smooth so I don't upset the progress the tank has made. I didn't think about making fresh saltwater before hand but that seems like the best way to do it.

I guess the only bad part of the move will be going 20 minutes further from my favorite LFS.

ihavecrabs · Jun 1, 2018

lickyricky said:
You should be good. It’s much easier on a young tank.
Just bag up the few creature you have, drain the water as low as you can, move the tank with sand and some water...keep your rock moist with damp paper towels or in tubs covered with water.
On the other end use all new water. Your sand and rock will help seed the new water with bacteria

Some good feedback here.

I personally wouldn't attempt to move the tank with much sand or water out of risk of breakage while handling. 1" bed and a little water won't hurt tho.

If you leave the sand in and do not disturb it, it can be reused. If you disturb it a lot, rinse it before reusing.