Moving tank to new home.. Fresh start?

[Joshua Litton]

Hi R2R, this is my first time posting here! I'm looking for a little advice on my situation.

I have a fully stocked 20g IM Nuvo peninsula at my parents home [where I currently live] that I need to move to my newly purchased home about 35 miles away. I'm really unhappy with my rock structure at the moment so I bought some Aquaforrest Stone Fix and want to get a new scape figured out. I also want to change out my sand so I have a new bag of that ready and waiting. Lastly, I need to figure out how to best transport over my fish and corals. I have a big storage bucket that I was going to transport the rock and sand in, but the fish and coral have me perplexed. To break it down, these are the 4 things I'm trying to figure out:

• I want to do the rock scaping asap, but I'm worried about pulling them out and detritus and lots of other nasty sh..tuff going all over the place. When is the optimal time to get that done?
• I also don't know if I should wait and pour the sand in once I get the tank to the new home or let is cycle and blow around a bit in the storage tub before transport.
• The fish (two clowns, two chromis, and a purple firefish) I think will be able to just go into a 5 gallon bucket for transport. When they get to the house, some fresh salt water and a little drip acclimation should be all thats needed.. I think?
• The corals, should I just bag them up like frags from the LFS and acclimate them when they get to the house?

Sorry for all the questions, but the process has me worried and overthinking EVERYTHING :O

 

[hotashes]

Joshua, I wish you all the best getting everything sorted etc. Thanks to @brandon429 take a read of this thread, it may help...

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

 

[Ruben's Reef]

Hi Joshua and welcome to R2R !!! Give some time and you will have a lot of answers from our fellow reefers who has a lot of experience on your situation.

 

[jolt]

On the fish and coral, I think what you proposed seems reasonable, assuming you will keep the ambient temperature controlled inside a vehicle. When I've moved fish in buckets, I use the plastic lids (you can get at Home Depot), and I've used the portable battery powered aerators by just drilling a small hole in the plastic lid to fit the airstone through. Moved many fish this way with no issues. About 2 gallons of water in the 5 gallon bucket has always worked well for me. I see you are an astros fan (me too!) so, I'm gonna guess you live in Texas. Academy sports has the aerators (for keeping bait alive)

 

[Joshua Litton]

@hotashes
Wow, there is a TON of great info in there. I have to admit, I'm a little confused on what @brandon429 is saying about transferring LR, but I think I'll go ahead and rinse my sandbed and just keep it nice and shallow! Thank you for pointing me to this thread.

@spyder813
Thank you!


@jolt
You know what, I didn't even think about that for the fish. I stocked up on 3 of those little aerator devices right before Harvey hit, even though I knew they weren't going to do much if worst came to worst.. Thanks for the tip. And yes, I live in Houston, GO STROS!