So when you take your reef with you, how do you do that? Drain down most of the water, put in an aerator of some kind and have movers carry the whole thing out...? Or take out all the corals and fish and put them in separate containers and drive like mad hoping they survive the trip (how long could they last)? And what do you mean by "legally move with corals?" Am a newbie here and just getting set up I'm already attached to my few corals and clowns, don't want to ever sell them unless I have to. Would be ok with me if we all got old together.
We talk about moving out of Florida eventually because the hurricanes here are only going to get worse over time.
When I move next time this is how I currently plan on doing it. Things may change but I've already done the long distance move (700km) minimal initial losses, lots of medium term losses because I had to wait 6 weeks to re-setup and that was just too long.
This was at my parents house for 6 weeks
The half full 90g tank had an achilles tang who got meaner and meaner in the small space and killed a lot of fish, in the 55g tank I had all kinds of euphillias which melted which in turn took out sps and so forth. Still I had a LOT of corals and fish survive like this for 6 weeks. RO/DI outside. The rest of my live rock in their garage with a pump ect.
I would get stock tanks to break down my reef the day before moving. This is breaking stuff off the rocks, separating everything so all the zoas and palys are together, LPS that are stingy have space, sps aren't touching ect. Once I had everything spread out in the stock tanks I'd start bagging and putting into foam boxes. I'd just thread it as a big coral shipment. I'd bag everything 1x1 knowing that a 7hr drive can become a 24hr time or more in the bag when you factor moving all your other stuff, eating, driving, gas and actually getting the keys of new house ect. While I would put the same species together I would try and bag everything separate to increase water volume.
I have 2 55 gallon drums for all of my live rock. I would carefully pack it and then just barely submerge it. I would want to pack it in a way so that the rock is packed in and won't break with all the jostling. This water will for sure be dumped as all the detritus from the rocks, crabs that have somehow remained hidden since 2006 when I got my live rock (seriously I found a bunch of crabs moving in 2016) and other various creatures may pop up in this. I'll save the bristleworms and what I know but random weirdos I'll say goodbye to.
IF there is room in the moving truck I would pack all of my fish in either 5 gallon buckets or 5 gallon water jugs for small fish. Again this is to have more clean water when I get to new house. The water will move enough in the truck to keep the water oxygenated and a fish in 3-4 gallons of water is a big difference then a smaller bag. If there is not room for everyone to go in 5 gallon buckets they will go in bags in boxes like the corals.
This move was hell and a half for a number of reasons, but this is still less transit time then an Indo or Australian shipment. Basically anywhere you move in your own country be it Canada, America, whatever it's going to be less distance / transit time. Now if I were moving to the west coast from the east coast I'd probably consider having everything shipped air cargo. Once you leave your country you can almost certainly forget about taking it with you not just because of cost but cites permits ect.
Finally the one big thing I did not touch on this above is I would go to new site or hire someone who is confident to prepare me at least 100 gallons of water probably red sea blue bucket because it's the closest alkalinity to my systems. I use instant ocean for my regular weekly water changes but if I was doing 100% water changes I would make sure the new salt has similar parameters to my tank. 10% water changes are not an issue with any old salt.
