Moving to Hawaii, need advice
 

Hi all,

I just received my letter of acceptance to the marine biology program at University of Hawaii at Manoa. Although I am very excited to move there, I cannot bring my reef tank with me. I have a few options:

This is what my tank has:
Fish
*Yellow Tang
*2 Clownfish
*Royal Gramma
*1 green chromis

Inverts
*1 Brittle star
*1 cleaner shrimp
*5 hermit crabs
*snails
*derasa clam that went from 3 inches to 6 inches in 3 months

Coral:
*soft and SPS

My parents are retired so they don't want to extensively take care of a whole 55 gallon reef tank. But I would like to add that while attending University of Iowa for my freshman year my mom did a really good job of taking care of it when it was at home. Currently the tank sits in a laboratory in the biology department at Iowa. I am not too keen on selling everything so I am wondering on what to keep and what to sell. The biggest issue is having to make my parents feed the fish or dose every day. I was thinking I could just keep the tang so he could clean up the live rock, but will that be enough food? Is there anything else you would get rid of? I just don't want to start over again because the system I have right now is close to perfect. I haven't changed the water in 6 months.

thanks,

Andy

What is so perfect about this tank?

How long will you be in school and burdening your parents with your fish tank? Either way that doesn't matter, sell the tank and start a new one when YOU are able to take care of it.

i saw this thread on 3 reef and im going to give u the same answer and say sell all livestock and store everything else

ouch!

My advice, easy, sell the tank, buy a mask.

Tough luck.. Coral that is not from Hawaii is illegal. Clams too. All are not allowed. Best to sell all and rebuild.

In all seriousness, this is my advice as well.

If you dont have the ability to keep your tank, sell it, or the live stock and see if you can stick it in your parents attic untill you return.

WOW! that was seriously the most jack-*** response to a question I have ever seen on here....

What you need to do is tell UOH thank you for accepting you, but you are going to respectfully decline, and tell them you have the perfect reef tank in IOWA and it needs you to take care of it….

ftw

ftw? what does that mean?

For the win. And that was ftw. Sell the livestock enjoy Hawaii and set it uP perfect when you return.

cool tankz
*waves as he takes a victory lap*

thompson12 Congratulations on acceptance to Hawaii

I have to agree with those who say to pick up a mask. Nothing beats seeing it in person. I went to Hawaii quite a few times when I was a kid, and well into my teens, and while I was college (have relatives ob Oahu and Maui). There have been times when all I did was put on a mask and just stuck my head in the water. There's something magical about seeing fish we normally see in fish stores in their natural environment. I seriously doubt you'd miss your tank. When you come back, I can almost guarantee that you'll want to set it up differently anyway.

Hate to agree with everyone else here but sell everything living keep what equipment you may want to use that won't be out dated in a few years and clean the heck out of it before you toss it in storage then enjoy your trip to Hawaii you lucky bastard

Sell the livestock, etc, store the better equipment. Cash is king and you'll need it in Hawaii.

I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but in the interest of being charitable until cherub gets on here and confirms or says otherwise, I will. Its possible this statement came out wrong.

I think a perfectly reasonable question would be to ask what parts of your system make you happy. Information about what you consider perfect and what you did to get there would be useful both as a set of helpful ideas, which is what this forum is all about, and as a basis for helping you determine what, if anything, you want to keep.

That said, go, enjoy Hawaii and the program you just got accepted to. Get the mask.

The op stated that he might leave his tang in the 55g to clean the algae off the rocks. I am not so sure it was that out of line.

Sell it and start over later.

We are not talking about a 300 gallon sps display tank here. Sell it and start over.

I am going to guess that this was intended as a reflective question for the op. Something like, "Is there really something about this tank that you can't just sell it and rebuild when you get back?". I really don't think it was meant as an insult, although as plain text, it definitely can be interpreted that way.

sell it you can always start over,

Despite all the many many rude and unnecessary comments I also agree that you should just sell everything you can, enjoy your time in Hawaii, and start over when you return. Best of luck.

Sell it and buy scuba gear... have some friends over there and every time they get the fish tank urge they grab there gear and go diving... Good luck and congrats on school!

dont look now, but they are trying to ban fishkeeping in hawaii now.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1969486

fix your links please.

I am all for stiffer regulation but all out bans are ridiculous.

People eat tangs for lunch.

The up side of selling what you have is that when you get back to it, you can bump it up to an even better set-up. I had to leave town for a couple of months on business a while back and broke down my 75. Now i'm "going to set it up right" again.

ok, well #1.) I try not to seem like I'm ignorant, but I know it comes off that way. When I say "perfect" it is, in my eyes close to perfect. I have been ridiculed for not testing my water for the first 5 years I had my tank and the only casualties I had were a sponge, green chromis (I can't keep these idk why), and two feather dusters that were picked at. The few times I did test the water I always had the same response from the swf store...perfect water. I change the water usually every 2 months, but since it's been at school the water hasn't been changed since the end of August, and the water is still clear, the skimmer is skimming, and I add magnesium, calcium, and iodine just because people tell me I should. I don't really take any offense to people being rude, but they're just bitter they have to spend more time to keep these beautiful tanks. I have coral exploding in growth under T5s and a clam that has gone from 2.5'' -> 6" since September.

Now for the actual topic....any thoughts on just keeping the tank with the water and live rock still running with my corals and clam??? I can't see how this would need anything but minimal upkeep.

sorry about the not-so-quick reply