Thoughts on a long distance move

phillygeeks · Mar 11, 2018

Later this summer I will be moving 2000 miles and am looking for opinions on moving my 57g DT. The tank is a mixed reef with a foxface, melanarus wrasse, 3 ocellaris clowns, bangaii cardinal and springeri damsel.

I will be converting the tank to a qt and starting a new tank in the new place. However, that will take a little time.

I have a jeep with an AC/DC converter so I can plug in a few air pumps easily and probably a small heater.

My thoughts are to place 2 marine pure blocks into my sump now to establish and to place the corals I want to save onto frag plugs. I will eventually place some things for sale/trade.

The plan is to split the fish into 2 containers and keep the corals on a frag rack that I will somehow secure. I will tack a marinepure block with super glue in each container so it doesn't move. In a third container I will keep a little of my live rock with just an air stone. I am eventually replacing all the live rock so I just want to keep enough to keep this tank going until the new one is up.

The driving part of the move will probably take about 48 hours

Jeepguy242 · Mar 11, 2018

I moved from Florida to North Carolina with my rock and corals and fish in coolers

Everything stayed in coolers for 3 days till the tank was set up

Small heaters and air pumps are the trick

tsav87 · Mar 11, 2018

@melev did a live stream about this just yesterday.

phillygeeks · Mar 11, 2018

Jeepguy242 said:
I moved from Florida to North Carolina with my rock and corals and fish in coolers

Everything stayed in coolers for 3 days till the tank was set up

Small heaters and air pumps are the trick

Thanks! I am thinking something similar. I will probably need to break the tank down a day before the mover, then 48 hours of traveling and then another day+ to setup the tank. That's at least 4, probably 5 days in coolers....I'm wondering if the marinepure blocks would be beneficial or I risk some die off and oxygen deprivation