bagging fish up for moving house

[lisa F]

I am moving house hopefully next week and will need to move my 125l tank. I have read lots of the posts earlier on the forum so know the logistics of it but am still very stressed!
I keep having worried about getting all the fish into bags etc for transporting them. We are only going about half a mile along the road so its not far. How do I get a lot of air in the top of the bag?? I don't have an air pump in the tank so am worried that there will not be enough air at the top. Also Ihave 4 yoyo loaches who are really fast and shy and I'm worried how stressed they are going to get with me trying to catch them. I thought they would need a bag each but could there be a few tetras and guppies in other bags?

I am ok with the though of actually emptying and moving the tank with it being such a short distance but I keep having nightmares with fish flapping all over the floor- HELP PLEASE!!!

Lisa

 

[clutterydrawer]

hiya

I recently had to catch ALL my fish to move them to a different tank while I changed the substrate. I would recommend having two (yes, two!) large nets on hand so you can use one net to encourage thehm into the other net...if you know what I mean. Submerge about one third of the bag in the tank, then catch 3-4 small fish at a time and put them in the bag. leave the other 2/3 of the bag empty and try to catch as much air in it as possible - don't blow into it as the air we breathe out is mostly CO2.

I would recommend taking out as much water as possible, and ALL the decor, before you try to catch the fish. This gives them less palces to hide. I naively thought i could catch tetras in a fully planted tank, then had to uproot all the plants and take out 3/4 of the water before I could get them.

I hope that helps a bit - good luck with the move! I doubt you'll have fish flapping around on the floor, I carried mine around in a lidless sandwich box and no one jumped.

 

[The-Wolf]

Do you have a cool box to hand?
if so for a short journey like yours, you could put the
fish in there filled approx 1/2 way up with tank water.
This will serve to keep the temperature stable and it
has a lid minimising the water splashing and of course
stopping the fish from jumping out.

 

[lisa F]

The cool box sounds like a good idea, I don't have one but could get one. I wouldn't have though to syphone most of the water out first but will now!

Do you think I will can leave the gravel in the bottom when I move it?- It sits on a big chest so we will lift the lid off and carry it on that so its weight should be supported evenly.

 

[The-Wolf]

Do you think I will can leave the gravel in the bottom when I move it?- It sits on a big chest so we will lift the lid off and carry it on that so its weight should be supported evenly.

If it's an all glas tank then i'd not risk it,
if however it is the type of tank that has
supports on the bottom then it will be ok.
Just remember leaving the gravel in makes the tank heavy.

 

[FishDan]

You could also use one (or several) buckets. Ones that have never had any chemical agent in them. You can save most of your water this way. You can also do this to distribute the weight a big. Water in all of them, fish in one, gravel in another, decorations and filter media in a third. As was mentioned all this stuff, including the water, gets heavy when you try to move it in big "chunks". Also, I would empty the tank out completely. For the most part the glass is not designed to withstand the kind of pressure that will placed on it if you attempt to carry the tank with gravel in it. Unless you carry it with the bottom supported, like maybe on a piece of wood or on the stand. This would make it even more heavy and cumbersome though.

Good luck!

\Dan

 

[lisa F]

best buy lots of buckets tomorrow!