transporting tips

[fishbreath69]

I am looking at getting a 90g tank with 30g sump, it comes with live sand, 100lbs of live rock aand a few fish. It will be about a 5 hour drive back home with everything. What is going to be the best way to get it all home with the least amount of loss of life on rock and sand?
Thanks in advance

[oscarinw]

I moved a 90 gallon system. I bought 5 20-gallon rubbermaids and put everything in them, loaded a moving van and reassembled everything at its destination.
Put the fish and coral in one of the containers together and make it the last to go in the van and the first to exit, connect a heater and a powerhead to it as soon as it arrives to its destination. Once home, lay the sand first and cover it with a large plastic bag, hold it in place at the bottom with a couple of rocks, then add the water (I would use 80% of the same and 20% freshly mixed) on top of the plastic. Once completed slide the plastic out of the way and turn the system on. Leave it over night and bring your coral and fish in the tank.
This is not an easy operation but it can be done with little to no damage to your livestock. Make sure to keep the rock wet at all times so you don't have die-off. Do a 20% water change on day 3 and 5 and test all throughout to make sure you don't have ammonia or nitrite...
Good luck with things and keep us posted.

[fishbreath69]

I read that I should rinse most of the sand, keep just a bit unrinsed to reseed it. What would be the benifits of that? And you answerd my next question for me... should I keep as much original water as possible.... yup...lol

[oscarinw]

Any sand bed will tend to accumulate 'dust' and rinsing it will get rid of that but would also get it rid of good inhabitants as well. If you have reasons to believe that your sandbed is really old and would have a lot of this unsightly, dusty byproduct of your nitrogen cycle, then rinse it. If the sandbed looks to be in good condition (i.e. no dark spots and not deeper than 2-3 inches) then I would just reuse it all.
Sine you're relocating your tank with all inhabitants, rinsing a big portion of your sand might actually be counter productive.
If you were just setting up and were using an old tank's substrate I would have suggested rinse and reuse.
In this case I tend to believe a just-reuse approach. Maybe you can use dry rinsed sand and reuse the top half portion of your inherited tank...
Good luck with things