Moving home ARGHHHH!!!

[Gaagaad]

I'm not really a beginner in some ways but in others I definitely am. I've had my aquarium for a little over 3 years and now I'm moving house. On Friday!!

I've managed to farm out the current inmates to my daughter in law and am now looking at fully emptying the tank.

My question is:

I'm now seeing parts of the tank that I've never seen before or been able to reach to clean. Once I get all the water and sand, pebbles, substrata out what's the best thing to clean the insides of the tank with? I'm guessing Mr Muscle won't do.

TIA

 

[GaryE3 1]

I cleaned my tanks as little as possible when I moved, to avoid upsetting the beneficial bacterial communities within. I scraped down the glass, and left it at that. The tank becomes a sort of organism in many ways, and we should work with that. You are going to have to work with restarting the cycle, so those parts of the tank you don't see could remain unseen...

Do you have hard water leaving a lot of scale on the glass?

 

[Naughts42 114]

Can your filter/s go in your DIL’s tank? That way you could maintain the cycle to a degree.
Vinegar (rinse well) or hydrogen peroxide or bleach (rinse and lots of dechlorinator) should work? It depends on the kind of dirt you’re dealing with.

 

[FattyFish]

Let it be the last job you do before you leave and the first job you do when you get to the other end.
When I last moved my tank, I drained it as much as I could and removed all of the substrate into a bucket. scraped and cleaned the glass. When I got to the other end, I added the substrate and capped it all off with fresh sand. Filled the tank, added some bottled bacteria and de-chlorinator, connected the filters and added my plants and fish...no losses.

 

[TwoTankAmin37]

I got a lot of my yanks used. I wanted to thoroughly clean and disinfect them. I used a two stage process. One step was to fill them with clean water and add muriatic acid o drop the ph. I would run a powerhead or pump in the tank for a while. This was done to remove calcium deposits etc. There were always some stubborn ones and I used a Q-tip dipped in acid to apply it directly to the spot, I also used a single edge razor when needed.

The other step was to fill the tank again with clean water and add a bunch id bleach. This worked on anything organic.
I then rinsed the tank very well. and ley it dry completely before using it. When I got my used 150 and 125 gal, tanks they were pretty bad, I could bot move them on my own. So I had them put inside on the stands I built for them. When the in-wall 75 leaked, I had to press the150 into service but it needed a big cleaning.

For this I used a big powerhead and Oxyclean like one would use for laundry. I spent a few hours setting it up, running the powerhead and then using a long handled scraper and algae brush to get anything off the glass the Oxyclean did not dissolve. I ultimately pumped the water down the toilet when done.

Since I never list fish soon after they went into the tanks above, I have to assume what I did worked and was not a threat to the fish etc. I always rinsed very them very well.

 

[Boundava1]

I have moved a few tanks and always emptied them of plants/DW, lowered water level to help catch fish; then did a deep gravel cleaning (removing as much water as possible and scooping the gravel out). I try to clean off any algae/hard water from the glass using magic eraser, a razor and vinegar while the tanks is still damp.

When I reset the tank I will wipe it down with vinegar and then again with a damp clean towel then reset the tank. My logic is that the BB is in my filter as the substrate isn't porous enough for a substantial colony of BB. So I will rinse the substrate in small batches before I put it back in the tank.

I have moved tanks from 15-125 gallons without issues so long as the filter BB is maintained. It can survive in stagnant water for short periods of time (i.e a bucket of tank water). If possible keep the filter itself in water for bacteria living inside, but that is not as important as the colonies in your media (ceramic/sponge etc.).

I am a chicken and would never use bleach, oxyclean or muraic acid to clean tanks. Vinegar and/or H2O2 are what I use.