Moving A Tank!

[DaisyDog]

I have just learned, I have to move! I have a 90 gallon tank. Any ideas or thoughts on breaking it down and moving it? I figure I will have to use a bunch of rubbermaid containers. Another question is I imagine once I get this thing moved, I can't just "put everything but in" without problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[collie man]

I just did this 3 months ago. It makes it easier if you have a second tank already set up and rest to go. You may not have that option so bag up the corals individually. Then put as many fish into a large brute trash can ir large rubbermaid. Make sure you keep everything heater....that's corals, fish, new tank, new water. Also try and save as much water from your old tank as possible. Make sure before you remove your rocks....remove the water so it isn't murky. I would also recomend a new sand bed or rinse the old sand thouroughly.

Good luck, Jeremy

[johnnyblaze313]

1 thing I just did when I moved my 180 was wrapped all my live rock with no coral attached to it in wet news paper and just threw it all in a brute 32 gal can... Saved me alot of weight and time

[hardin4019]

My 55 FOWLR was given to me a few months ago. I had to help move it. It took about 3 hours to drain, remove the rock and fish, load into my truck, drive 1/2 hour across town, and re-assemble in perfect working order.

Things we did I would recommend.
-LOTS of 5 gallon buckets. They are small, lighter than trying to move 32 gallon trash cans, and a heck of a lot sturdier than most rubber made totes. (I had around 13 buckets in the back seat of my truck). The buckets came from my LFS. Guy was awesome, and let us borrow the buckets that we cleaned and returned a day or two later.
-Keep the water inside the vehicle if it at all possible, unless you live somewhere warm and the temp isn't a problem right now
-Split the fish up into several different buckets so you don't overcrowd them. (No one ever believed my Powder Blue would make the move, little alone live in a 55, and it did awesome by himself in a bucket and is still alive today)
-DEFINITLEY keep the fish buckets in the inside of the car/truck (pre-warm the car/truck before loading fish/coral).
-We kept the LR in buckets of water... Not real necessary when moving across town, but what else were we going to put it in?
-20% or more water change. I had 15g of freshly mixed, warm, ready to use water ready when we got the tank to my place. This was an awesome idea, because the old water was not clean as we got to bottom, and we ended up using the old water to wash the tank and equipment down once we got it all apart.

(Load vehicle in reverse order of this list)
-Get it all moved, get the fish/coral inside the new house immediately.
-Water inside next
-Tank in last (everything else is Temp sensitive)
-Place LR, and Sand back in place
-Fill tank with water, turn heater on inside tank
-Test water temp to see if it is the same as the buckets with fish/coral, if it is, add them.
-Wait and watch.

All of this worked for me, but it was FOWLR and only 55g... But hopefully, there is something here that you can take away from this and have a successful move.