Moving tank across room

[captain_jimmy]

I am planning to move my tank across to the other side of my living room tomorrow.

First off, I have read brandon42's tank move / sand rinse thread.

My tanks is 8 months or so old. Have a stack of coral, 7 fish, anemone, cuc etc.
It's doing pretty well, seems fairly stable and everything happy.

I vacuum my whole sand bed fairly thoroughly every water change which is probably every two weeks on average. I can't imagine there is much buildup in it.

I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on leaving the sand in my tank as opposed to pulling it out, rinsing it and re-adding to avoid a cycle.
I was thinking I pull my rocks and corals, catch the fish and keep them in a temp 55g tub with heaters, powerheads, airstones.
Then I could drain the water and leave just the damp sand bed in the bottom.

I have suction cups for moving the tank and will enlist a couple of mates to help.

Would reassemble the tank on stand in the new spot then carefully add water back in trying not to stir the sand, then add the rocks, then the fish corals etc.

What's everyone's thoughts? Is it too risky, should I take the extra very time consuming step of removing the sand and cleaning it?

Cheers
captain

 

[threebuoys]

i would not remove the sand unless it is covered with algae, diatoms, cyano or other undesirables you want to clean out. If you don't wash the rocks out, the tank will not re-cycle. Enough bacteria will be preserved on those other surfaces even if you do stir up or remove the sand.

 

[brandon429]

this doesnt sound like a dirty move it sounds clean already, should be easy to scoot it over drained on slides somehow

the way the move threads impact the decision in my opinion is if someone wants the maximum clean, so that they can feed more in the new tank to drive growth vs recover from waste sloshing, then doing a rip clean before moving has only been shown beneficial. the least work approach is always the most appealing initially

8 mos is new even if never cleaned

8 mos + cleaned is pretty safe still.

I know a nice balanced reef tank right now where fish/cuc action on the sand is so thorough the tank can be moved anywhere in the house and it wouldn't matter, its a clean running/regularly exported reef. those kind dont need a thorough clean due to routines already in place.

the more stored up ones need better consideration

 

[captain_jimmy]

this doesnt sound like a dirty move it sounds clean already, should be easy to scoot it over drained on slides somehow

the way the move threads impact the decision in my opinion is if someone wants the maximum clean, so that they can feed more in the new tank to drive growth vs recover from waste sloshing, then doing a rip clean before moving has only been shown beneficial. the least work approach is always the most appealing initially

8 mos is new even if never cleaned

8 mos + cleaned is pretty safe still.

I know a nice balanced reef tank right now where fish/cuc action on the sand is so thorough the tank can be moved anywhere in the house and it wouldn't matter, its a clean running/regularly exported reef. those kind dont need a thorough clean due to routines already in place.

the more stored up ones need better consideration

Great tha ks for the replies guys.
I'll leave sand in and try to be gentle moving it.

Cheers
Captain

 

[captain_jimmy]

Moved the tank last night. Everything seems.to be alive this morning.



It took me probably 6-7 hours from when I began removing water to when I had the whole system running again. During that time the fish were in four inches of water above my sandbed in the tank and the corals were in a tub full of the rock that I kept at a reasonable temperature for most.of the time.

Temps dropped to around 74 overall and then came back up to the normal 78 over 3 hours.

@brandon429 in the rip clean thread there is some stuff about running lights on acclimation mode and bringing them back up to normal.
Do you think this is necessary in my case or can I just run my normal schedule?

 

[brandon429]

For sure normal is ok, we do that lowering when we’ve ripped every single spec of organic waste from every crevice


yours is fine and also the window of concern for non rinse moves is like one hour after moving and reset, so once it’s been assembled an hour or so it means total safety. We derived that time guess from posts in the chemistry forum where multiple folks using seneye for accurate ammonia measure were dosing raw cycling ammonia directly into their mixed reefs, and tracking the uptake rate which was all of five mins in every tank, a massive dose oxidized. Therefore any suspect transfer spikes will self resolve in well under an hour, once the assembly and movement of the bed stops. Nice move, it was appropriate for your tank age and prior care regimen

 

[captain_jimmy]

For sure normal is ok, we do that lowering when we’ve ripped every single spec of organic waste from every crevice


yours is fine and also the window of concern for non rinse moves is like one hour after moving and reset, so once it’s been assembled an hour or so it means total safety. We derived that time guess from posts in the chemistry forum where multiple folks using seneye for accurate ammonia measure were dosing raw cycling ammonia directly into their mixed reefs, and tracking the uptake rate which was all of five mins in every tank, a massive dose oxidized. Therefore any suspect transfer spikes will self resolve in well under an hour, once the assembly and movement of the bed stops. Nice move, it was appropriate for your tank age and prior care regimen

Great thanks for replying.