Moving House

[jungleistmassiv]

Hi guys and girls

In the next few weeks i'm moving house, about 15 miles away. Although i'm a bit worried about moving my tanks. I have 2 tropical tanks, one is a 60 litre, and one is a 30 litre.

Would I be ok if I were to bag the fish up from the larger tank, place the bags inside the smaller tank to keep warm, while I then drain the big tank, move it to my new house, refill it, set the filter back up and wait about an hour for it to come up to temperature, then move all my fish over?

I know it can be a problem adding too many fish to a tank at one go, but the filter is already established for the amount of fish I have, the only thing that worries me is that it will be full of fresh water.

Any help will be gratefully received

Thanks
Rich

 

[Colin_T]

don't Hi guys & girls me you human, I'm a fish

Your best bet is to move the fish and water together. Go to the local hardware store or somewhere like Big W and buy a 45 litre plastic rubbish bin. Fill the plastic bin to about 2/3s full with tank water. Catch the fish and put them in the bin. Put an airstone in the bin and leave it to bubble.
Empty the rest of the tank water out onto the garden. Gravel clean the tank while you are draining the remaining water out. When the tank is empty put it in the car along with the bucket with fish in, (seatbelts usually fit over the bins). If you have plants put them in another bucket or bag and seal it up. Keep it out of the sun to stop them cooking.
Clean your filter about a week before you move and when you drain the tank put the filter materials into a bucket of tank water.
Transport the whole lot to the new place and set the tank up with the old water. Add the fish, plants & filter. Then top up with some clean water that is free of chlorine and has a similar temperature & PH to the tank.
Don't feed the fish for a couple of days after the move.
Try to do one tank at a time if you can. It is less stressful to the fish if they aren't sitting around in buckets all day. And give yourself a full day to move them. Also try to move them after everything else has been moved so you don't have tanks and buckets of water everywhere when the furniture is being carried in and out of the house.

 

[darkwolf29a]

This is what I did, at the beginning of February, to 5 big tanks (2 29, 1 40, 1 55, and 1 75):

Items you need:
1)empty water buckets (The kind you get from the pet store for making water to age).
2) 5 gallon containers ( I used Rubbermaid rectangle containers.) You'll be putting various parts in there.

Procedure:

1) Unplug the heater for an hour.
2) Siphon out about 4 gallons of water. (Less if you don't have big fish)
3) Catch the fish.
4) Aireate the the bucket with the fish.
5) Do a regular cleaning of the gravel. You may as well start with a clean tank.
6) Into 1 rubbermaid container, put about 3 gallons of water. Put your heater, filter media, plants, etc in there, to keep them moist and the bacteria alive.
7) Remove the gravel into a 5 gallon rubbermaid.
8) Put enough water in that 5 gallon to cover the rocks, giving the bacteria a fighting chance.

I only moved downstairs, but my thought is to put everything in garbage bags, to catch any leaking water.

I did that for all my fish tanks, and all arrived safe and happy.

Just remember to drive carefully, and don't make any sudden movements.

 

[jungleistmassiv]

thanks for that, should be a big help

The tanks will be the last thing i move, as I quite imagine there will be a week or so of furniture arranging! I'll have to get my hands on a plastic drum for transporting the water, I do have a couple knocking about in the garage, but I use these to collect old oil in when I do oil changes on my cars, I can't imagine my fish will be too pleased if I used these

Do you think my LFS will let me borrow a drum for a day?

Thanks again

Rich

 

[Colin_T]

Some petshops will lend you theirs but I would go buy one from somewhere. They aren't too expensive.

 

[Nim]

You have a week between moving house? That would be very lucky and as suggested above should be no problem. In worst case scenario, you may experience a mini cycle which usually lasts a couple of days to a week.

Imagine if you had to move house when you were in a chain.. I had to do that last year when 7:30 AM the movers were in and I had to get my 4 tanks empty and ready for them to ship along with the entire contents and hand over the keys to the estate agent by noon then wait for the keys for the new place, unload everything and get the tanks and fish up and running again by night

Nim
ps: Oh and my tanks were 1 x 60g, 2 x 35g, 1 x 25g tall hex.