Please help?

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I am in the process of buying a mature 250l Redsea tank and will need to relocate it to my house. I am re entering the tropical marine arena after 20 years.

It contains live rock which could assist with maintaining the water quality after the move. Alberton to Randburg <30 min drive. It involves fish shrimp and an anemone

I have planned the physical move with advice from the various forums but are still concerned about the following:

Should I wash the gravel - (might be required to be removed to reduce weight of the tank for moving)

What can I expect will happen with my water quality after the move. Will it require cycling or will it be ok to reintroduce the fish etc immediately?

I will transport all the existing water(except for losses) etc and will have makeup quantity available at home.

Should I consider adding anything for reducing the shock of the move and to prevent illness?

Thanks Frikkie
 
move your fish and corals in a polystyrene box with a battery operated air pump with airstone then when they get to the new house drop a heater in with them and they will be fine until you put them back in the tank add a little stress guard will also help
 
I wouldn't wash the gravel. As secondwave stated, keep the fish in a polystyrene container until ready . I would personally add a little bit of seachem stability after you have added the gravel and water back in as well as some biomagnet clarifier to get the water clear as soon as you can as there will most probably be cloudy water when you first set it up, I wouldn't leave them in the container too long though but that's just me, moving the anemine might be trickier as they are probably more sensitive to any small swings in conditions
 
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Bud that 250 is not the lightest even when empty. When I bought mine two adults struggled to move it. Besides the weight its also fairly bulky and difficult to move in confined spaces. I reckon you run a huge risk of breaking something if you try transporting it "loaded". I would follow the advice given and put as much into alternate containers as possible. Good luck with the move the RSM250 is a great little tank to own.
 
By the way I stay in Alberton and bought mine from a guy in your area, if you need I have 2 battery operated air pumps bought from @Secondwave that I am happy to let you use should this help
 
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I wouldn't wash the gravel. As secondwave stated, keep the fish in a polystyrene container until ready . I would personally add a little bit of seachem stability after you have added the gravel and water back in as well as some biomagnet clarifier to get the water clear as soon as you can as there will most probably be cloudy water when you first set it up, I wouldn't leave them in the container too long though but that's just me, moving the anemine might be trickier as they are probably more sensitive to any small swings in conditions

secondwave DIDNT say wash the gravel please read my quote again
 
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Moving tank

Thanks guys,

So let me just clarify, I can remove the gravel but i should not wash it or should I leave it in the tank?
 
For me the biggest concern is the temperature drop differences between the different drums and polystyrene boxes. No advantage in it for me if the fish are in warm boxes, but the water temperature in the drums dropped by 5 or more in relation to the boxes. Acclimatizing the fish at the end and you will anyway drop the fish temperature to be the same as what the drums would be. You would not be able to push the water from the drums temperature up within 30 minutes anyway.

Rather keep everything in the same type of containers. And drop a heater in each. Then you do not have issues with placing your liverock into water that's a lot colder than the rock either. And keep in mind that within the rock is also a lot of living creatures that's also sensitive to temperature differences. If you need to drip newly acquired shrimps for longer than fish, should the same not apply to copepods and micro stars?

First, remove all the extra hardware. Anything else that you can do before draining the tank.

I place the big rocks into the same container than the fish. But make sure its stable, not stacked up and will not move. Do not want sushi! That helps in reducing the stress a lot by at least providing something natural looking where they can hide against in a pure white environment. And keep the lid on, they can jump out when you are not watching.

Do not put all the fish in one container, all your eggs in one basket. Split them between the drums. If possible, split all the ones that could have issues with each other. Like Tangs. Also split those who could accidentally hurt other easily, like a foxface and another same size fish. Foxface and small clowns or damsels are better.

Do not put the drums in the sun. Even in winter time, they could overheat.

If you got enough manpower - rather get an extra guy or two to help. (remember the beer and pizza). I would drain the tank and leave the substrate in it. Just enough water to almost cover it. Move the tank onto the vehicle. Then fill a bit of water back to have max 5cm water above the substrate. Drive to new location. Drain the extra water again. Move the tank. Fill up the tank with water from the drums, with the rocks, fish and corals. Do not worry about aquascaping. The water would be dirty anyway and you would not see that well what you are doing. Can do that tomorrow. Just place the bigger bottom rocks where they would be. Just do not place corals on top of each other. All the different drums should still be at the same temperature, so no need at all to acclimatize anything.

Then refit all the other hardware.

Focus on limiting the time from draining water, to refilling the water.

Have about 10% extra saltwater available. Bottom of all the containers will be small pieces of rubbish that you do not need back into your tank. Plus the water that were added extra during the transit would be extra dirty. Have replacement water available.

If the time you would take to move the tank, distance between new and old locations are a lot bigger, then I might reconsider the use of polystyrene or cooler boxes. Here I would rather focus on keeping the temperature the same between all the containers.

If you got only one vehicle available, Get everything out, move the tank to new house, come back later to fetch the containers. That will waste a lot of time.
 
I place the big rocks into the same container than the fish.

Also try to get some kind of measurement of the rocks before the move, to make sure your containers are big enough. And get containers that are not a brittle plastic.

I learned the hard way when I moved. I misjudged the size if one of my rocks, so it didn't fit into the bucket I had for it. I was forced to put it in a plastic crate, but the crate was a brittle plastic and somewhere in transit I must have gone over a bump that caused the rock to crack the plastic and drain all the water.

My Royal Gramma that was in the same bucket ended up on the back of the trailer. Luckily he survived and is back to terrorising my other fish. I lost a few frags that were glued to the rock though.
 
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