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Here are some notes and experiences from my move of my reef tank in April 1998.  It is the first of a total of three moves that has have made with this current tank.

This was something that was going to take a lot to do, moving an established 5 foot reef tank to a new location.  Luckily the new location was only about a five minutes drive away and there was some time to make the move slowly.  I decided that it would be best if we moved all our personal belongings on one weekend, then the reef tank the next so that there is more time to dedicate to it. This turned out to be a good plan, as there is no way in the world I would have been able to move us and the tank on the same weekend. Well, it could have been possible but I would not have slept at all. Moving our own personally stuff was not trivial either, but that I not what you are here to read about. The end of that first weekend we were settled in, but it was missing an important part.

The Tuesday night between moving us and the reef, the Marine Aquarium Society of Victoria was scheduled to hold their monthly meeting at my house. Talk about timing, I am to hold the meeting when my reef is located at a place I do not even live anymore. So, I had to go back and visit inorder to hold the meeting.

The rest of the week was spent organising and planning this for the big weekend, oh yeah and there was some normal work and sleep done there somewhere too. This included getting enough water drums to transport almost all of the water and to get further water from the bay to do water changes. After two trips down to the bay to get 150 litres each time and three trips to local stores and friends I had enough and David was also bring along some 25 litre buckets as well. I picked up about 8 styrofoam boxes from the local supermarket, which they use to get broccoli and those associated vegetables in. Exactly the same boxes that they transport live rock in normally. Also picked up a heap of plastic bags of varying sizes from the the hardware store, along with a small plastic shovel to pick up all the sand, and epoxy putty. So all was now set and ready to go for the big move.

The plan with all the fish, snails, cucumber, corals etc was to place them in the larvae tank for a couple of days while the main reef tank settles down and is suitable for all the corals to be reintroduced. The "holding" tank simply consists of a glass baffle at one end to create a sump like compartment, small powerhead to act as a return pump, counter current skimmer, 18W daylight fluorescent light and 25W heater. The light intensity is not enough to be able to maintain any photosynthetic corals, but coralline algae seems to hold its own. It should be enough to keep the photosynthetic corals going, ticking over, until they could be placed into main tank. As it worked out it could not have been done without the this holding tank.

First thing to do was to pull apart all the external plumbing and take out some water. Then the lighting and anything not inside the system, i.e. circulation pumps. This only took about a hour and a half, and by that time David arrived and it was time to start on the tank internals. We left the circulation pumps operating until all the rock was removed and it was time to siphon out some water to catch the fish.

Removing the corals was the first thing removed from the tank, including those that had been attached to larger rocks. This would not have taken too long but just had to be careful with the packing of all of them to make sure any knocks, damage etc would be minimise. The boxes that they were packed in was labels as such so that when I got to the new location could easily find them and put them into the holding tank. While doing this the odd invertebrate was also picked up if they happened to pass by. This included snail, hermits, cucumbers and brittle stars.

Next was the live rock, which was done in sections to make it a little easier to put it all back together at the other end. This sort of worked, but not quite, though I was not planning to totally recreate the reef structure on how it was previously. The odd invertebrate was removed as they appeared from underneth the rocks, such as more cucumber, hermits and the sea urchin. This was one thing I was rather worried about, not finding the sea urchin and crushing it under a moved or dropped rock within the aquarium. A section was packed into one box and labelled where it came from, such as upper right, lower middle etc. In all the live rock fitted into 5 boxes, which is the actual number that was purchased in the first place. Though some was removed and given away, and this could be accounted by the fact that the rock was packed more loosely to minimise the damage to anything attached to it.

One invertebrate did not like being handled either, decided to protest about it and cause some pain in the process. Take care with the next black cucumber you handle, they can have bit of a surprise in store for you. While picking it up to put it in a bag I triggered it's defence mechanism, which consists of expelling white, sticky filaments our of its rear end. I had picked it up it with its rear end facing out from between the thumb and first finger, so these filaments were spread across the back of my hand and fingers. It is actually very strong too, it is difficult to actually break them by moving just your fingers, and is not much easier to actually remove from the skin. Most likely the reason that it did not do this previously, i.e. when it was brought home from the store, is that it was all out of the material from previous expulsions during collection and transport. I certainly know that I will be handling him with more respect and care next time, you would not beleive how painful it is to have a stickly, stringy mass all over you fingers and in removing it it pulls out the hairs on the back of your fingers. Ouch! I can certainly see how this would allow them to get away form a fish or some other predator after being attacked. The predator would be more worried about the fact that is appendages were stuck together than the cucumber.

There was one big surprise waiting when I lifted up the rock that the pair of Valenceannia puellaris had their burrow, eggs! Over the few weeks before hand they had been showing their ritual of improving the burrow, disappearing for a time etc that they have done on more than 5 times so far. So I knew it was around the time for spawning, but was not 100% sure on the timing as had not been taking notes laterly. Underneth the rock where the burrow was a egg mass was attached. It was about 5cm long, 3cm wide and 8mm thick, quite a large number of eggs. The mass had a "peppered" appearence which upon closer inspection were found to be the larvae eyes. The larvae was about 1mm long with two black eyes taking up about 50% of the body length. The body was elipsoidal. Throughout the mass there were also several white eggs, which were most likely those eggs that had not hatched. The mass was also held together by a bit of mucus of some sort. Some of the eggs stayed attached to the bottom of the rock, but the rest were lost into the water in the tank. I did not bother to try and save them beyond having a close look at them. There was no chance that I would be able to provide them with good enough conditions inorder to survive, the next few days are going to be pretty stressful on everythin.

Once all the rock was removed the tank could not been seen through due to all the detritus that was stirred up, a real brown soup. The fish were looking a bit stressed and all were huddled up towards the overflow end as this was the darkest part of the tank. More water was drained out into the drums so that it would be easier to catch all the fish and shrimp, down to about 12cm in depth. Two nets, one large to catch them and one small to heard them into the other were used to catch them. Most were quite easy to catch, but the hardest was a banded goby. He would "flutter" back and forth rapidly when cornered between a rock, glass and the net and when he found an opening shoot to the other end in a flash. The other notable thing about the fish is that the Valencennia puellaris, orange spotted gobies, are a large fish and therefore strong. With their thrashing around when in the net which I was not ready for almost caused me to drop them. Urgh, I can just picture it now, my worst nightmare, dropping a fish on the floor then stepping on them. Don't that make you squirm?  All the fish and shrimp were placed into two of the large plastic 25 litre buckets that David brought along. They were perfect, and seal up such that water could not be split.

Then came the sand and the last of the dirty wate out of the bottom which was just tipped down the drain. The sand was stored in three 25 litre buckets with a minium of water in them. I segregated it to what came from the top layer and the bottom. This is mainly because of the various snails that live in the sand and come only out at night to feed through the sand and on the glass. I did not want to put them on the bottom and kill them as they would not be likely to work their way up to the surface due to the weight of the sand and the eggcrate.

The tank was the most awkward thing to move of all, and we found out eventually what was the best way to carry it. All you have to do is turn the tank upside down and hold you hands under it. We also used some tea towels between our hands and the tank, made things a lot less hard on the hands. This allows you to have a good grip on it, and a side of the glass. Otherwise it is very hard to grip on a flat surface of glass, very hard on the hands.

It took until 4pm to get all of the rock, equipment and inhabitants to the new location, that is after starting the move at 7am! We used a station-wagon to transport most of the equipment etc. What a day, but that is not the half of it, now it was time to put it all back together again.

First thing was the major organisms into the holding tank. Tell you what, a 100 litre tank looks mighty crowded with stock that is normally in a 600 litre one. Not all the corals would fit in, so the couple of larger ones had to go directly into the main tank. Next it was to set up all the plumbing so that things would be ready to go. Then the sand, which was just poured out from the buckets it was carried in and it was only added up until the sand reached the level of the eggcrate layer. This is so that the rock had a good strong and stable foundation on which to rest and when the sand movers do their stuff the reef structure will not be upset too much.

The rock was not too hard to arrange, but this time I made entirely sure that there was space the entire way around the tank sides so no rock was within 5cm of it. This makes water circulation much better and can also keep the glass nice and clean. The rock structure ended up not being quite the same as before, as would be expected. I think that I will have to do some rearranging of some sorts in a couple of months. It is not as open or holey as it was, with large spaces inbetween, but there is still lots of caves and tunnels through the rock. There is also a nice single narrow bridge between two structures at either end of the Park. The shaping should allow some good current and lighting variations and appears to have a lot more spots on which to attach fragments too. There was also some perfect spots for clams to be placed in the center towards the water surface as a center piece. I only stayed up until 10pm, that was late enough for me. Most of the rock was in there arranged and stablised by epoxy putty. Sunday was then spent tiding things up, adjusting and attempting to retune things.

Over the next two weeks while the reef tank settled down regular water changes were performed on the holding tank. This required that about 3 times a week I had to drive down to the bay and collect some more water, and what fun that is when it is raining and the wind has whipped up some waves. The water changes were performed about 4 times a day, with around 15% changes at a time. Several 5% changes were performed on the main tank as well, but not quite the same frequency because of the larger volume of water required. It was expected that the main tank would settle down within a week and then ammonia/nitrite would not longer be a problem, but this did not end up being the case. It appears that the time spent by the rock out of water was too long, and a significant bacteria die off occured. Ammonia levels went up to about 2 ppm and nitrites were measured as around 1pp. Once at these levels, which was almost immediately, they stay there for three weeks. At the end of the first week I transfer most of the corals to the main tank, even though there was still ammonia/nitrite there. This was to get them into a system with a higher water volume and better lighting conditions as the holding tank had ammonia/nitrite itself from the fact that it had such a high bioload and not enough bacteria to handle it. All corals showed no adverse effect to the transfer, and actually several looked much better under the more intense lighting. The next week it was the fishes and other invertebrates turn as I did not want them to be held in such small confinds for too much longer for the same reason as the coral plus the added stress factor.

The move allowed some interesting observations of the effect on that it had on the different species of corals. In all this moving some losses were expected, one or two would not be too much, but no where near the number that was suffered. All the smaller polyped hard corals hardly missed a beat with the exception of one, and are now growing even better than they were previously. One of the Acropora sp. is actually growing at a faster rate so far than previously. Particularly intersting is one that the end of one of the branches on one of the colonies got broken off while I was doing some system maintenence before the MASOV meeting. Within a week it had healed over with tissue and now has grown about 4mm since. This was also the case for the soft corals too, with none too worried about it with the exception of one. On the other hand, the larger polyped coral, such as the Euphyllia fimbriata, did not take to it very nicely and in this case did not make it. Based on this experience, it appears that the more fleshy type corals suffer more when transported and left in none ideal conditions. It appears to have to do with the amount of flesh that hangs off the skeleton and get knocked around. This is not such an issue with soft corals as they are not firmly attached to a piece of skeleton and can take a little bit of stress to the tissue with out tearing in and causing irreversible damage.

Now about three weeks after moving the system and with all the livestock that survived back in it truely looks fantastic, I am very happy with how things are now. Just as well to, as I don't really want to go through all that again ;-) I will have to get some pictures taken this weekend to show how it all now looks. Most dramatic is the fact that it takes up about 3/4 of the wall space in the lounge room and reaches almost up to the ceiling, you just cannot miss it when you walk in through the door. The wall behind it now is a dark brown brick, and the contrast looks better I think than when it was a light cream from the painted wall previously. When placing the stand I left about twice the room that I did before, and this makes things much easier. Cleaning the back glass will be a breeze, and it is easy to slip in behind to have a closer look at any of the residents that are either hiding or towards the back. Will also make it easy to see any that decide to take a trip into the overflow, which has been the case for several residents. If you are about to set up or move a reef, I would suggest that you leave space to go in behind it, makes things so much easier. The more room the better.