# Need moving advice



## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

Hi Guys

I'm planning to move by end of the mounts. I have 10Gl tank that I'm planning to move to new place. This tank has a few fish (neons, guppies, Chery barbs, rammy nose tetras, few cory cutfishes and otto)and a lot of shrimps (RCS, CRS and amanos). It is also heavily planted tank and has few assassin snails. I'm also planning to separate my fish, amanos and some snails to new 30Gl tank. Here is my challenge. I'll have 7 days between getting new place and leaving old one. I'm planning to start a 30Gl new tank in the first day and put some plants from my current tank to the new tank as well as to start filter there with the media from my 10GL tank's filter. I'm also planning to use Seachem Stability for the 7 days. Here are my questions
1. How to remove all the fish and plants for transporting the tank
2. Can I move it with little water left and all the shrimps and snails inside (as I had too many shrimps and snails there) ?
3. How to transport the fish and in which container to keep it less stressed ?
4. I'm planning to put my fish to the bigger tank right after I move as it does not make scene to move it back to old one and after catch it again. What is the best way to cycle the new tank in 7day and prepare it for fish, so it wont's be stresses ?


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## cliff (Aug 30, 2010)

I'd focus on making this a two-part operation (things will be busy enough just moving and getting setup IMO).
1) Moving your existing the tank
2) Setup new tank

Moving
I would grab a couple of 5/6 gallon buckets (with lids) visit the big box home store, drain most of your 10G into them - I'd leave 1-2" above the gravel for the shrimp/snails and leave the plants in the tank. It shouldn't be too heavy at that point. Put the fish in the buckets, I'll throw a bit of moss or some plant cuttings in there. Transport them all over and setup the tank again and continue doing your regular water changes.

Setting up a new tank
Cycle it as per normal - lots of threads on here with different methods.


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## J-P (Feb 27, 2011)

Put the fish in bags 1/4 filled with water.

Drain the existing 10 gal leaving about .5 ~ 1.5 inches of water. Take out all the decor. Keep the filter media wet.

If the bigger tank is there when you arrive, just dump everything into that (including the substrate).

Boom! instant cycle and new home


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

Thank you guys for your advice. But here is the issue. In the new place I want to run two tanks. 30Gl - For fish (I may put some assassin snails and some amano shrimps as well as some little amount RCS in it). And I'll use the plants from old 10Gl one in it as I have already too many in it. And I wan to setup 10GL one for shrimps only (RCS and CRS). This is why I can not move gravel and the filter to the new tank. I need to run both equally.
In addition the new 30Gl tank will have AC50 installed. And 1 weeks (while without fish) it will have an sponge filter from my current AC20 running together with rest of the filter inserts in it to get the bacteria from old tank to the new. Also In 1 week from now I'll install second sponge filter in my AC20 to transfer some bacteria to new filter insert in the old filter, so I can move old / current sponge filter insert to the new tank


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## AquaNekoMobile (Feb 26, 2010)

ppaskova said:


> Thank you guys for your advice. But here is the issue. In the new place I want to run two tanks. 30Gl - For fish (I may put some assassin snails and some amano shrimps as well as some little amount RCS in it). And I'll use the plants from old 10Gl one in it as I have already too many in it. And I wan to setup 10GL one for shrimps only (RCS and CRS). This is why I can not move gravel and the filter to the new tank. I need to run both equally.


By the months end? That's a good 30days. I know you have a AC20. That is enough time to seed a filter mesh. Take some filter floss and cut it the size of what you would normally fit into the media basket. Now take that newly cut filter floss and put it into the left side of the AC20 where the high/low flow switch is. Just keep it there and it'll do it's thing by filling that filter floss full of good beneficial cultures.

When it comes time to do the move and setup the 30gal with the filter (you're using another Aquaclear on the 30gal right?) just remove the old filter floss from the AC20's media basket and put it into the 30gal filter and put the filter floss you just seeded in the AC20 in the high/low flow area into the main media basket and use that for the 10gal. You'll have a lot of good cycled cultures already inside the sponge/biomedia already to keep the tank going along with the gravel.

That 30gal with the old used filter floss will jump start the 30gal quickly. As with moving the fish well everyone one elses comments already covered that one.

That is just what I did before when gettingup a few tanks and testing the water levels after and no issues from the cycling point of view. The fish/livestock however will need about 1 week in my experience to settle in again but after that they seem as normal as before.

Hope things go well with the move. BTW you can move some of the gravel of the 10gal to speed things up in the gravel bed for the bacteria unless the gravel color is something else in there that you don't want to mix in. (i.e blue grav into a all black grav or ;; rainbow grav into some other grav )


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