Moving The Reef 2,000 Miles.

Jaag · Feb 2, 2018

In October last year I was offered a seat in the physician assistant program at West Liberty University in West Virginia. I am super excited about getting into their school. It was a big feat considering only 18 people get accepted.

I will be moving in May from Utah to West Virginia. I am going to take right around 4 days to make the trip. The tank is a 20 gallon Nuvo that has been running for 4 or so months. I am planning on putting my fish (midas blenny, clown goby, neon goby and an exquisite fairy wrasse) in a bucket with a heater, bubbler and some live rock. I am putting the rock in there for the bacteria to keep everything in check. I will place a lid with some holes for chords in it on top. The rest of the rock and coral will be in an other bucket. I have never moved a tank this far and am a little nervous.

Has anyone moved their tank this far?
Also I am looking for input and advice.
Not the best pics but the best pics I have on me at the moment.

brandon429 · Feb 2, 2018

nice

well done and the tank too!

your move, we cover similar setups in the sand rinse thread and to add any ideas I wanted to point out the rocks + fish is a transfer risk (they're shipped wo rocks for this reason) although it can be done that way.

Live rock is a consumer of oxygen when unlit, and even when lit depending on plant/animal balances. its packing the fish in with extra bioload.

also, live rock is the second place we look to not transfer one iota of detritus (biological oxygen demand...substrate for bacteria that aren't filtration bac/o2 consumers...pls detritus is incompletely broken down proteins and are an ammonia source depending)

Your system is clearly clean we can see and none of this may matter, but to shore up ends those are the details I see here. that and not transferring any of the sand, set it up with new sand IMO massively pre rinsed before use, so that your new tank is cloudless.

Id be moving the fish in bags or in fish buckets + water change on the road maybe half way through. easy to carry mix water.

an inverter that w run a heater and even an airpump small is about eighty bucks at wal mart, that'll keep chg water heated and ready and the actual containers/just brainstorming.

a battery powered bait air pump is ideal and runs about 50 hours on two d batteries.

laminar air flow is indicated in your need vs anything a water pump could provide, in this case air bubbling is ideal for o2 turnover and co2 degassing.

needbiggertanks · Feb 2, 2018

I took a 3 day trip from South Carolina to Minnesota when moving my tank. I moved it over memorial day weekend and did not use a heater. I used the live rock and an airstone every 4 hours or so. I kept prime on hand incase ammonia spiked. I did bring the bucket with fish into the hotels at night for temperature and kept the airstone on the whole time

Jaag · Feb 2, 2018

brandon429 said:
nice

well done and the tank too!

your move, we cover similar setups in the sand rinse thread and to add any ideas I wanted to point out the rocks + fish is a transfer risk (they're shipped wo rocks for this reason) although it can be done that way.

Live rock is a consumer of oxygen when unlit, and even when lit depending on plant/animal balances. its packing the fish in with extra bioload.

also, live rock is the second place we look to not transfer one iota of detritus (biological oxygen demand...substrate for bacteria that aren't filtration bac/o2 consumers...pls detritus is incompletely broken down proteins and are an ammonia source depending)

Your system is clearly clean we can see and none of this may matter, but to shore up ends those are the details I see here. that and not transferring any of the sand, set it up with new sand IMO massively pre rinsed before use, so that your new tank is cloudless.

Id be moving the fish in bags or in fish buckets + water change on the road maybe half way through. easy to carry mix water.

an inverter that w run a heater and even an airpump small is about eighty bucks at wal mart, that'll keep chg water heated and ready and the actual containers/just brainstorming.

a battery powered bait air pump is ideal and runs about 50 hours on two d batteries.

laminar air flow is indicated in your need vs anything a water pump could provide, in this case air bubbling is ideal for o2 turnover and co2 degassing.

You think the fish will be fine for 4 days in the bucket without bacteria? Or should I dose bacteria through out the drive?

Jaag · Feb 2, 2018

needbiggertanks said:
I took a 3 day trip from South Carolina to Minnesota when moving my tank. I moved it over memorial day weekend and did not use a heater. I used the live rock and an airstone every 4 hours or so. I kept prime on hand incase ammonia spiked. I did bring the bucket with fish into the hotels at night for temperature and kept the airstone on the whole time

I like the idea of prime. Do you think dosing bacteria would be better than prime because it doesn't just trap the ammonia but breaks it down and eliminates it?

brandon429 · Feb 2, 2018

either one of those approaches are fine, they ship internationally about that long fine/stressed agreed.

if your move was mine, Id have change water ready to mete out, not the dosers, although either bottle bac or prime isn't horrible either, they'll make test kits look all wonky though. id have at least one or two home depot buckets of heated water ready for minor water change halfway through. a u haul to move a twenty gallon setup is rock n roll ha

before you move, take out one rock for detritus load testing in my opinion.
do nothing but put the rock down inside a clean test bucket of water and swish it about roughly to try and dislodge test stuff. then set it down and leave it about a day or two, see how much extra detritus the animals are casting off themselves, make preps based on that mini modeling about how detritus exists in your system.

needbiggertanks · Feb 2, 2018

Jaag said:
I like the idea of prime. Do you think dosing bacteria would be better than prime because it doesn't just trap the ammonia but breaks it down and eliminates it?

Actually the fish were in the buckets with the rock so there was already established bacteria in there. I think i dosed prime 3/4 of the way and the fish stayed in the buckets a few days extra (2?) until i set up the temporary tank while building the upgrade. Fish made it, corals made it. I have a build thread somewhere on here but not sure how much i have detailed about when i got here.

KIRBLIT · Feb 2, 2018

You have to be careful about oxygen with adding bacteria in there. If you add to much bacteria the fish will suffocate because the bacteria will out compete them for o2. If you go bare bucket and add air to the water you can also trigger the ammonia to convert to a more harmful form because the pH will change in the water and ammonia will change from nh3 to nh4 I believe (could be the other way around) and it's very toxic. That's why you don't want to try and up the pH in a shipped fish bag by taking too much time to drip acclimate. If it were me I would prob go with maybe some sponges seeded in your tank in the buckets and then aerate once in a while and use prime as needed to tie up the ammonia.

Jaag · Feb 4, 2018

KIRBLIT said:
You have to be careful about oxygen with adding bacteria in there. If you add to much bacteria the fish will suffocate because the bacteria will out compete them for o2. If you go bare bucket and add air to the water you can also trigger the ammonia to convert to a more harmful form because the pH will change in the water and ammonia will change from nh3 to nh4 I believe (could be the other way around) and it's very toxic. That's why you don't want to try and up the pH in a shipped fish bag by taking too much time to drip acclimate. If it were me I would prob go with maybe some sponges seeded in your tank in the buckets and then aerate once in a while and use prime as needed to tie up the ammonia.

I plan on have an aerator in the bucket the whole. You think it's a better idea not to use bacteria then and just use prime?

KIRBLIT · Feb 4, 2018

Throw a couple sponges like you use in a HOB filter into your sump a couple months before you leave to get them seeded with bacteria and then use them in the buckets for filtration. The reason I would use sponges over rock is so that nobody gets crushed by a rock on the trip because they will be trying to hide somewhere. I would do 2 buckets if you can or one larger bucket/small trashcan . That's alot of fish for 3 - 4 gallons of water for 4 days and minimal filtration. Use the prime if it's needed but you should prob be OK if it's going to be aerated the whole way.