Hi again. I've been today and chosen my new carpet and it's due to be fitted on 7th May. Things are now more serious and I'm already considering where I'm going to store my stock.
I have a small tank that I use for fry mostly. It measures 46cm wide, 26cm deep and is 25cm high. I estimate it holds around 30 litres of water. It has a lid, I have a spare heater and I have two filters I can use - I have an Interpet PFmini (filters up to 40 litres) and I have a PF1 too (which filters up to 48 litres) I'm considering putting most of my small fish in this tank - that would include 8 harlequins, my black neons (not sure how many I have of those now) the oto's (I think I only have two now, havn't seen the 3rd for a while) and female curviceps - she needs to be away from the male as he bullies her. Will this tank be large enough for these fish for up to 3 days maximum?
As to the rest of my stock: I have a large plastic storage box which I've used before for storing fish whilst I move their homes around. It holds around 50 litres approx. I was planning to add to this my larger tetras and male curviceps. My angels for a short while while the tank is moved and refilled and then they can go back in the tank because they are easy to catch.
I plan of draining the tank down to the last 1 and a half inches of water, taping the tank to the base then sliding the tank (or rather the base with the tank still on it!) the 6ft that it needs to slide to get out of the room. This means I can leave the cories, ancistrus and SAE's in the tank. It will only be this empty for around half an hour (if that) before I re-fill it.
The larger tetra's will need to stay in the storage box until the tank is back in situ in my living room - this will probably be a maximum of 2 days. In this time none of the fish will be fed as I doubt I'll be able to get to them. Regarding filtering the storage box - well I could add the PF1 to it and filter it that way - for 13 tetra's it will probably surfice. The alternative is to remove one of the externals from my main tank and try and get it running on the storage box - I doubt it will run though as the storage box will have to be on the floor and common sense says the filter will need gravity to run?
I just wondered if all this sounded like a good plan or not ... just another mind over the situation would be useful