I moved a couple months ago so here's what I did. First of all I moved about 20 minutes away so not far either. I have a 45g cube with 20T sump. I removed over half of the water from the tank into buckets. Placed rocks and corals in the buckets, trying to keep as much seperate as possible. Any high dollar corals got bagged. With all the rock and coral out, fish are easy to catch. They went into buckets with rocks and corals as well. I removed the rest of the water out of the tank. I had 60lbs of sand and 20lbs of crushed coral so I would say my sand bed was deep as well. I scooped out over half of the sand in buckets as well and put in tank water to top off(they were heavy!) I then removed water and equipment from the sump, which you don't have to worry about. At the new place I had purchased a 45g rubbermaid plastic container and rinsed with RODI. Make sure you dont get clear as they can be more flimsy and use different chemicals than the colored plastic. I filled it up with about 10gallons on new salt water, with a power head and heater. I had help from some reef club friends moving all the buckets, stand and tank to the new place. I then put tank water from the buckets into the container as well 10 gallons. Place rock coral and fish into the new container. I wouldn't go over 20g in the plastic as it starts to bow with the weight of the water. I rinsed out some of the sand with clean salt water and put all the sand in the tank. I then filled it up with what remaining old tank water I had and new salt water. I put another powerhead in there with my other heater. I let that run for a week. All CUC seemed ok in the tank while it ran for a week. Through out the week i feed the fish in the container and would use a large piece of egg crate as a light rack and ran my T5's over the container for several hours a day. Throughout the week I checked all the levels in my tank and everything was in check. I then drained some water out and started placing rock. After the rock was set, corals were placed(some rock had coral already attached) Last the fish went in. I had on 2 losses, a cheap chalice that was already dying, and I haven't seen my pistol shrimp since, so I count him a loss. My fish load was light(2 picasso's, leopard wrasse, yasha hasi goby, mandarin) so I really had no issues with them in the holding container for a week, and the wrasse was fine for a week without sand, she slept under a rock. I wouldn't recommend moving the tank with sand in it as it is very heavy and could actually break the bottom glass panel. Let me know if you have any questions, and good luck.
