# Moving all my tanks



## spit.fire (Jan 3, 2011)

so on the 15th of april i get the fun job of moving everything i own to a new house

the only hard part of it that i can see is moving my tanks, (my fluval specs will be easy tho)

i have a 55 gal predator tank
a 30 gallon community tank
and a 29 gallon salt tank


what would be the best way to relocate tanks without causing any sort of mini cycle in them


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## target (Apr 21, 2010)

Put the fish into a rubbermaid bin with water from the tank.
Add your filter to the bin, if possible, and run it while you finish draining the tanks. This will keep the bacteria alive.
Move the tanks and fish to the new place, and plug the filters back in.
Set up the tanks, then fill the tanks with new, clean water, add dechlorinator, put the filters back on the tanks and add the fish.
Done.


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## Mferko (Jun 8, 2010)

how long till the bacteria in a large cannister like 2080 or fx5 dies? can you take the media trays out and put them in the rubbermaid with the fish or would it make too much mess? recently ive started wondering how the heck im going to move this 125 when the time comes.. it has to go into the elevator standing on its end...


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## Phillyb (Jan 18, 2011)

yeah basically just dont clean your tanks/filters..use a air stone in the buket if its gona take awhile and you should be fine this isent to big of a tank so it should be fairly easy & quick good luck on the move!


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## Phillyb (Jan 18, 2011)

mferko dont worry its the same thing for moving big/small tanks only difrence is big tanks weight like 1000x times more out of experince you should be fine just gona suck taking out your substrate its a stinky job 


Btw nice tank just seen the pics


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## Morainy (Apr 21, 2010)

Aquaman went through this with a bunch of tanks, big and small. He probably has tips.

I know that for some tanks, he put the fish into buckets, put the substrate into other buckets, and kept the filters going in yet another bucket of water. When he moved the first batches of fish, it was during an extremely cold spell and the temp dropped quite quickly during transport -- but the fish were okay. You'll be luckier with the weather.



spit.fire said:


> so on the 15th of april i get the fun job of moving everything i own to a new house
> 
> the only hard part of it that i can see is moving my tanks, (my fluval specs will be easy tho)
> 
> ...


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## Rastapus (Apr 21, 2010)

Aside from the suggested info, one of the most important additional steps is to keep as much water as possible. Generally if you keep half of your water, while maintaining the filters as suggested, it will be the same as a water change as far as the fish are concerned.


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## tony1928 (Apr 22, 2010)

Without water flow, I'd say the bacteria will start dying in about half an hour or so. That's what people have been saying anyways. I wouldn't chance it for anymore than a couple hours and you risk killing most of it. I've had power outages that knock out power for half a day. When you open up the filter, it just reeks. Definitely somethings died.


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## spit.fire (Jan 3, 2011)

ive pretty much got a whole game plan for moving ( i want to have everything done in 2 days) start friday after 3 and be done by sunday afternoon.

i have a 20ft enclosed cargo trailer that SHOULD fit all my stuff and i plan on having everything loaded by saterday afternoon. The second the trailer is loaded i will be putting my tanks in my suburban and my friends van.

i plan on saving all the water, i have ten ten gallon water jugs left over from when i used to go camping all the time so i figured i could put all the water in those

i plan to bag most of my smaller fish and transport them all in the Styrofoam coolers fish shipments come in (i have lots of them) and as far as my livee rock and driftwood goes ill just throw it in a rubbermaid. 

As far as substrate goes the only substrate i plan to take out is out of my community tank because i want to replace the aragonite sand with neutral ph sand / fine gravel

(i converted my cichlid tank to a community tank and the plants dont seem to like the aragonite sand)

im not 100% sure what ill be doing about my filters but im thinking they shouldnt be off for more than an hour or 2


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## sdfish223 (Jul 27, 2010)

When I moved I used plastic buckets to move the water and gravel, and placed the filter media in one of the buckets. I probably moved about 60% of the water. I used plastic bags to transport the fish I got from the local fish store.

In all it took me about 6 hours from tearing it down, moving them, setting them back up.

I did several water tests over the evening and the next few days and never had a mini-cycle of any sort.


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## spit.fire (Jan 3, 2011)

so that was a fun 4 hours.... got 2 of my tanks moved, next one should be easier tho because ill have some muscle tomorrow so i wont be trying to move tanks on my own (the gilfriend cant help because of the whole preggo thingy)


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## taureandragon76 (Apr 21, 2010)

If your filters are gonna be off for an hour or two chances are pretty good that the bacteria will die off. You don't need to save all the water at all, half the water would be good as you are gonna need to add new as everything will get stirred up pretty good. Also the smaller tanks would be fine to leave the gravel in but the 55g I would really recommend taking it out as it adds alot of weight. With what you have and the time of year we are in all you really need is a couple of 5g buckets or rubbermaids and put the water, fish and substrate in there, would save you time and time is really important when moving tanks. When I moved this is all I did mind ya it was more than a couple rubbermaids and buckets I ran the filters on the buckets when I could and when they were in transport I just put the media right in the buckets with the fish. I think I lost one neon which is pretty good seeing how I have some fairly sensitive fish.


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## spit.fire (Jan 3, 2011)

taureandragon76 said:


> If your filters are gonna be off for an hour or two chances are pretty good that the bacteria will die off. You don't need to save all the water at all, half the water would be good as you are gonna need to add new as everything will get stirred up pretty good. Also the smaller tanks would be fine to leave the gravel in but the 55g I would really recommend taking it out as it adds alot of weight. With what you have and the time of year we are in all you really need is a couple of 5g buckets or rubbermaids and put the water, fish and substrate in there, would save you time and time is really important when moving tanks. When I moved this is all I did mind ya it was more than a couple rubbermaids and buckets I ran the filters on the buckets when I could and when they were in transport I just put the media right in the buckets with the fish. I think I lost one neon which is pretty good seeing how I have some fairly sensitive fish.


so far ive only lost about 6 neons.... but not from the move, it was from my baby polypterus' eating them


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