# Re establishing a tank after moving



## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

For all those who have moved an established reef tank, what did you do? 
What would you do differently?
What didn't work?

I have one month till I need to start moving corals and fish out of our house. If Sig were here, he would tell me I could throw some Dr Tims bacteria into the system and start moving in 2 days.

Has anyone done that successfully and were there any issues?

I have holding tanks set up and can start moving things as soon as salinity and temperature stabilize, as well as when good bacteria start to take hold.

My plan is to start moving Easter weekend, and then do it gradually over the next two weeks until the end of April. But if I could do it slower, over a longer period of time, I would prefer to start sooner.

Total move includes about 40 fish, two tanks of established corals, inverts, and one sea horse to her own tank. (And no mantis shrimps, yeah!!!!)


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## 4pokguy (Apr 27, 2011)

my tank is a lot smaller, it's only a 20g long. I have a pistol shrimp and goby and I couldn't get them out. I also have a mandarin, shrimp and a pair of clowns so I left enough water in the tank for them to still be submerged. I kept the drained water in buckets with lids. Soaked newspaper in the water and wrapped it around the corals to keep them from drying out. Put the tank with rock work, sand and all into the truck. Moved the tank to the new house, removed the wet newspaper, then put the water that I had drained back into the tank. You're gonna lose some of the water so you'll need to have some new SW ready.
This probably won't work well in your case since your tanks are probably much larger, but maybe this can give you some ideas of what to do.
Good luck with the move!


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Thanks Pok,
I'm going to be doing something like that for one tank, as it's 30 gallons and holds micro fish. Hardly any rock but the stuff that is in there will go into buckets with the water. Doing that one in April, when it gets warmer. I've also saved a bunch of shipping boxes so I can pack everything in foam so it doesn't loose too much heat.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

You have lots of time to get Dr Tims but dumping SeaChem Stability has worked for me. Having Prime/Safe on hand helps with ammonia and nitrite until the bacterial reanimates.

Another thing you can do in the new place is spiking the system with ammonia (max 5mg/L) to simulate a high bioload and dump in the Stability. Track how fast ammonia/nitrite gets to zero. When it does get to zero fast, the system is has a high enough bacterial population to receive the livestock bioload. Until then you will have to keep on adding the ammonia or the bacterial will starve and shrink in population.

Keep an eye on nitrate and it that gets above the exisitng system just do a good water change.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

What ammonia do you use? What strength? As I have less rock work in the new system, right now, until I move, I've added some matrix material.
Going to be moving some rock over from the old tank this week that I know doesn't have coral or fish/ inverts in it. 
The other side of my concern is not taking too much rock out of the old system to cause a spike or change the bioload.


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## belmaskin1 (Nov 10, 2015)

I bought 2 large blocks of Marinepure ( 8x8x4) to put in the sump of my current system to populate with bacteria in anticipation of setting up a larger tank this summer. I don't know how long they take to become active, but I think the claim is each block is equal to 100lbs of liverock for denitrification purposes. I haven't used them yet so I can't say if they work or if a few weeks is enough time to become seeded. I'm not sure if something like that would help re-establish your systems.


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## Sea MunnKey (Oct 2, 2014)

I have accomplished cycling my re-booted system with acquiring saltwater from my trusted lfs right before water changes maintenance are done.

Hope this works


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## corpusse (Jan 3, 2011)

I moved over 700km, took something like 20 hours to get my livestock unpacked and during this move I lost just one fish out of about 15. That being said I then lost a good chunk of my livestock but because I had to wait *90 days* to re setup the reef. What happened was I moved in with my parents for a couple of months and had my tanks semi setup in their bathroom while I waited to move into my own house in the area.

Unfortunately my euphillyias all melted and that took out most of my LPS as well as all the fish including my beloved masked swallowtail in that tank. Fish began to fight in cramped spaces and of course water quality suffered, but if you can do the move over 2 weeks you should be able to have minimal loses.

If you can I'd get a ton of holding tanks, 10 gallons, rubbermaids, sumps whatever. Divide stuff up which will minimize losses.

If you have enough holding tanks you can then take your time with the main displays instead of rushing and screwing up the plumbing, having cloudy water ect. If you keep your live rock and other filtration wet, you should be able to just put it in the tank in the new location and let it settle for a day or 2 and then start adding back the fish / coral. I don't think you should need much if any additional bacteria you can probably bring enough from your existing tanks unless they are crazy maxed bioloads. If you have any large fish consider keeping them in QT for a couple of weeks while your tank settles.

Good luck, as long as you have lots of water you should be fine, doing it over a longer time is much better then trying to get the tanks all resetup the same day you take them down.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

Crayon said:


> What ammonia do you use? What strength? As I have less rock work in the new system, right now, until I move, I've added some matrix material.
> Going to be moving some rock over from the old tank this week that I know doesn't have coral or fish/ inverts in it.
> The other side of my concern is not taking too much rock out of the old system to cause a spike or change the bioload.


Hmmm...harder to find plain old ammonia these days without added detergents and scent...then again I haven't a need for it in eons. I'll poke around HD/Lowes as I have to drop in to grab a few nick-nacks.

Just take a few rock out at a time and you should be good.

As always, test to verify.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

wtac said:


> Hmmm...harder to find plain old ammonia these days without added detergents and scent...then again I haven't a need for it in eons.


Reason I asked is because I have some pharmaceutical grade ammonia which is crazy strong. The kind of stuff we need bio hazard suits to wear when we open it. So I can use it but need to dilute it big time.

I'm going to start moving some rock over this weekend.
Corals in two weeks, fish in a month or so.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

Sweet!

Let me know the concentration/molarity printed on the bottle and I can give you directions to make a stock solution and dosing amount.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Update on our move.
Today was our last tank move of the 4 we had. It was my small fish, including ventralis, and the decision was made to drain the tank 3/4 of the way down, put all the water in buckets, move the tank (it was a 30 gallon tank on a stand, self contained, no sump) with the remaining water, fish, shrimp and corals still in the tank. Then put the old water back into the tank once it got to the new location.
Not sure I would do it that way again, as the fish and corals were battered around going down the stairs. There wasn't a lot of rock or sand, but it still looked like the fish took a beating.
Everything was still alive after the 45 minute drive, however the ventralis died later tonight. This was our only fish tragedy so far, because of the move. Ventralis anthias are incredibly delicate and in hind sight, I should have probably tried to catch that fish and bag it. But we all thought keeping her in the tank would be less stressful than trying to catch her.

My cold water tank is struggling a lot. If it takes 6 weeks to cycle a tropical tank, it takes 6 months to cycle a cold water tank. My inverts and starfish in the cold system don't look good. This was the youngest system as it hadn't even been cycled for 2 weeks, but I had starter bacteria and used a lot of the old water, and cold water occupants are very hardy, so I thought it would be fine.

All other fish moved really well. We have only lost a couple coral frags. Both urchins died, not sure why, as they got dripped and acclimated.

My sea horse developed a tail infection and is being treated in a qt tank. She's touch and go. However with 95% of the move done, we will now be able to focus on getting salt water reservoirs going for auto water changes. So hopefully everything will settle down and stabilize over the next few weeks.

Man! That was a lot of work. Way easier to sell and start over but these tanks are part of our family and I didn't want to part with them.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

belmaskin1 said:


> I bought 2 large blocks of Marinepure ( 8x8x4) to put in the sump of my current system to populate with bacteria in anticipation of setting up a larger tank this summer. I don't know how long they take to become active, but I think the claim is each block is equal to 100lbs of liverock for denitrification purposes. I haven't used them yet so I can't say if they work or if a few weeks is enough time to become seeded. I'm not sure if something like that would help re-establish your systems.


I use the marinepure blocks on my nano fish 30 gallon because I have minimal rock. I like them a lot. I put similar stuff into the new system when I set it up to help get it cycled quicker and I think it worked. Except for the cold water tank, because, as I noted in the other post, they just take so fracking long to cycle.

I highly recommend them.


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

wtac said:


> Sweet!
> 
> Let me know the concentration/molarity printed on the bottle and I can give you directions to make a stock solution and dosing amount.


Couldn't tell you anything about the ammonia, as the label has been eaten away. Didn't need it either. Had enough Bacter-7 and food for the Bacter 7 to kick start the whole system.


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## guelphjay (Mar 10, 2014)

Thanks for keeping this thread alive Crayon!

I'm in a similar but not exactly the same situation. I have a new tank coming in 2 weeks. Upgrading from 100G to 180G. The current sump is 80 gallons so it will be reused. 

I'm putting in new substrate. (going with white sand and the current tank has Hawaiian black). 

Can I move over 'most' of the current water and all the live rock, fish, corals etc. Basically just plop them in with some fresh mixed, temperature matched water?


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

If you are able to keep both tanks going over a couple weeks, bonus. This would allow you to start your new tank, get it partially cycled, add some rock ( no corals) to the new tank from the old tank and use them to get a bacteria culture going.

I used Brightwell Bacter 7 to get my system kickstarted. But I didn't use any sand. Going bb right now.

I moved everything over gradually over the space of a month, used as much of the old tank water as I could, and looked at the process as doing large water changes. So new water into the old system, and the old water into the new system.

However:
If you are trying to do this in a day, and take the old tank apart, move it out and then put the new tank in its place, you are going to have to approach this differently.

Hopefully others will add comments here as well, because I know several people have had to move their systems quickly, and it would be good to know what they did.

Here is what I would suggest.

Get some Brute garbage cans for the rock. Take some water out of your tank, and put it into the garbage can. Add new salt water to your system to top it up. You can then carefully remove some of the top rock that is not touching the sand and put it in the garbage can with a heater and a pump.

Remove your corals to a separate pail, add heater and pump. Do not disturb the sand bed or kick up a cloud of muck.

Remove fish to a separate pail, add heater and pump. Make sure the heaters are set down a bit lower than normal or use very small heaters cause they will over heat the small water volume.

Remove as much clear water as possible from old tank, add to new tank or put in holding pails. Do not get rid of any old water unless it's completely cloudy.
Remove as much clean rock as possible, add to new tank, or put in garbage pail.

Get all your inverts out too!

So if everything is out of your old tank now and you can set up the new tank, remember that your only going to be filling it with less than half of old water. So you want to give your new tank as much time as possible to mature before you add any livestock in.

Get your base rock in the tank asap. Watch ammonia levels.
Acclimate all corals, inverts and fish back into the system as if they are going into a brand new system, which they are. I did corals first and fish last, didn't loose anything except the urchins.

Gtg right now, hopefully others will post their process as I had the advantage of not having to do this in a day.


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## tom g (Jul 8, 2009)

*Tranfer*

Glad everything went well cheryl.
Agree with cheryl do not disturb sand I have had terrible luck with that..
I used a Rubbermaid container the larger ones as a tank..
Removed rock and corals and then added fish.
As for sand I didn't disturb. When I got tank running I let it run in office for two weeks empty and started to add fish slowly.
As for brute containers here's a trick I learned from sig.
Go to home Depot and get your brutes then clean them and take em back ...I know u may balk at it .but who wants 3 new brutes hanging around ..what ever u do don't rush anything .if u do there will be deaths 
Good luck


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## guelphjay (Mar 10, 2014)

Thanks guys. I can keep the old tank running while the new one gets going, so that will be the plan 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

Don't try and move too much at once. Temperature acclimate as much as possible. Get some styrofoam boxes and bags from the store, move your corals, inverts and fish in boxes, not pails. Pails loose too much heat. Rocks can go in pails.
Drip all inverts and fish to acclimate but the cool thing is, you can add their bag water right into your new system!!


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## The-An (Sep 26, 2016)

I did almost the same when my 220 g got leak. took me 3 weeks to fix the tank.
what I did are. I fill up water from the tank to bathtub where all my corals go. 2x 30G rubbermaids for my fishes. rocks about 200 pounds to my sump and 4x5 G buckets. and don't forget about heater and some powerheads to all live stocks. wish you all the best for moving.


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