Moving A Marine Tank

[adamgreen240]

HI, im currently looking at buying a 6ft X 2ft X 2ft tank on Ebay. It comes with £400 of live rock as well as the following fish:
1 adult majestic angel fish
1 yellow tang
1 regal tang
1 clown fish
1 firefish
4 blue chromis
1 sand shifting starfish

The problem is though, i live 140 miles away and it will take me about 3 hours to drive.

This is my first step into marines and i really do need advice as to how to transport the fish .

I would really appreciate any help.

Adam

 

[IIITYIII]

HI, im currently looking at buying a 6ft X 2ft X 2ft tank on Ebay. It comes with £400 of live rock as well as the following fish:
1 adult majestic angel fish
1 yellow tang
1 regal tang
1 clown fish
1 firefish
4 blue chromis
1 sand shifting starfish

The problem is though, i live 140 miles away and it will take me about 3 hours to drive.

This is my first step into marines and i really do need advice as to how to transport the fish .

I would really appreciate any help.

Adam

bags and oxygen...if you oxygenate them well they should def last 3 hours they ship over night so. the starfish will be okay for sure. depends also on how stressed out the fish become during the transport as well.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Hmmmmmm first thing is what kind of transportation do you have? Also you are going to need a few people to lift a tank that size as well.

Do you have all the other kit already (salt, RO water, refractometer, etc)?

If it was me I would check with the guy your buying it from to see what SG they have the water at. Then a day or two before you pick it up make up as much water as you can. You are going to need a lot of water storage containers to do this.

I would go to your LFS and get some of the biggest fish bags you can get your hands on. Use these for the livestock (they should be ok if you are only 3 hours away and the bags are big). Remember when bagging them up you need more air in the bag than water. Probably worth asking the guy not to feed them for a day or two before you pick them up as well.

Take a padded box you can cover over to put the bagged fish in and keep it as dark as possible.

For the liverock I would suggest getting a load of plastic stacker boxes to put them in and cover them with damp towels (damp with the water form the tank).

Also try to get as much water from their tank as possible.

Once you have all of this (you are really going to need a Van I think) and get it back to yours.

set up the tank, make sure its level.
Add the water that you had previously made. A couple of big heaters in at this point is a good idea to bring the water up to the right temp.
Add the water you bought back (dont fill the tank completely yet).
Add the the liverock.
Add the rest of the water to fill the tank up.
Float the bags with the livestock for 10 minutes (probably worth having a container with water at the right temp to the side you can float the bags in as soon as you get home, make sure you open them up as soon as possible to get fresh air in them).

Then you need to drip acclimatise them to the tank water (I normally do this over two hours, 3 for really sensitive species).

Dont use poly boxes to transport water. They leak (well the ones I had leaked anyway ).


thats the way I would do it but have never had to move a tank of that size. Im sure some other people will be able to give you some good advice as well.

 

[CageUK]

Also don't forget that it's not just traveling time. It's disassembly and setup times as well which is likely to at least double the three hours and possibly more. So it may be a good idea to put the fish into open containers with heat and movement while setting up the tank as soon as you get it home.

 

[norite]

Shame you're in the wrong side of the country (I'm in the NE), because I have LOADS of 15L plastic buckets with snap on lids i want to get rid of - they contained vegetable oil - I run my car on the stuff - you could have these to put all the water, fish and live rock in!