by Simon Finn - May 2005

As many of you have heard, my tank is some what diminished now, having lost about 8 clams, all my acropora bar one or 2 bits, and the latest fatality, my male clown.

Background

To explain the story (save me repeating myself), I thought I would give a full write up, as well as hopefully give some advice to others so they dont make the same mistakes.

First I think I need to explain the situation I was in. I recently bought a new house, which has room for a nice new tank, a 8x3x2.5. We moved out of my much too small apartment (well for my lifestyle) the day after settlement (which was the ANZAC long weekend). That weekend I had the 8x3x2.5 tank stand made onsite, and the following week, the tank was to be built onsite. Two weeks later, the tank would be filled, up and running and I could migrate my inhabitants across over the next week. While this isn't the best way of doing things (no cycle) the small amount of inhabitants would not make much of an imprint on 1,700 litres of the new tank.

This would have left me with about 3 weeks total where I can completely move out of the apartment, fix any issues, and rent it out. Obviously being about to rent it out as soon as possible was a high priority, as it represent a significant cash flow issue if I do not have that income coming in.

The day before the new tank was to be built, I received a call stating that Daydream (the tank builders) had somehow forgotten to order the glass. They had somewhat under quoted the job, and were very unhappy about it (somewhere in the realm of half what they would have charged). As the week progressed on, it hit Friday, and I still had absolutely no indication as to when the tank was going to be built. Daydream had also recently taken on a major fitout of a LFS here in sydney, and it seemed as though I was priority #31259873. It was anyones guess when they would get around to it.

The Move

I had to make the call. Move the tank. The exposure was too great. Tank moving can't be that bad? A few calls to the mates who helped (Firechild, Sweeper, Onyx) and it was all organised. Tank was going ot be moved, everyone was bringing buckets, bags etc etc and all was fine and dandy. Even had some spare water lined up.

The plan was to drain the tank, bag up all the livesand and hopefully move the tank holus bolus, deep sand bed and all. It's a 5x2x2. That was rather optimistic.

It was far from a warm day that Sunday. We kicked off a 9am, with a neighbours bint of a woman parked across my garage and then they went out. Not such a good start. Eventually got that sorted and proceeded to bag what we could. We put all the fish in one of the blue drums that Chris (Onyx) brought around- there was only 6 fish, tang, rabbit, 2 mandarins and 2 clowns. Clams went into others. We kinda ran out of bags and drums when it came to a big rock full of acro - oh well it should be ok to ship dry - it wont be that long.

It was that long. There was no way we could move the DSB in place, the tank was heavy enough by itslef without a coupla hundred kilos of wet sand in it. Had to remove it. Incidentally, there was no smell from it, and the DSB was full of life. It was about 4 years old. The decision was made to essentially bin the DSB, bar what Chris could take a nice DSB seed. I still had a fuge with a DSB in it...should be ok.

I thnk we had the main stuff moved over to the house (5 minutes away) by about 2pm. A lot longer than expected. We were all exhausted already, most of us having not eaten. I could hardly think straight. We set the tank up, put a few powerheads and heaters in it, and poured water into it to about 3/4 full, chucked the LR in and had went to eat some food. I think by this point the water was about 22 degrees.

One of the issues we had was the water was so cloudy we could hardly see. My magnifica was sliming everywhere, I had no overflow or skimmer runnign at this point. and a lot of the live rock was covered in sand and crap. We got everything into the tnak, but most of it looked quite unhappy.

After many hours of putting stuff in, repeated trips back to the apartment for things, and playing guess where that frag went, finally got the fuge in. The objective was to set up the sump get the skimmer working, then finally get the fish into the tank. This was at around 5pm.

The next obstacle struck. Not enough water to full the sump. More water was meant ot have arrived but didn't, so we were left short. We jerry rigged up a return from the fuge but could do the skimmer, chucked this fish in. At this point it was clear this was not going to be good.

I think we finished up at about 8 pm. 11 hours of solid moving. The water was cold, acros were already dying, and we were all on the verge of collapse.

The Aftermath

Anyways through this week, I've been gradually losing clams, including some of my absolute favourites. My large blue maxima was pride and joy, was one of the first. My green and grey from Bandit was shortly thereafter. I have now lost 5 maximas, 1 crocea and 1 squamosa.

What I though was a wee bite mark on my clown turned infected and now has killed him too, 11th hour medication efforts not having any effect.

Ammonia levels in the tank are about 1ppm, obviosuly waaay too high. I have changed what water I can, pending time to go get some more. Salinity turned out to be a tad high, where before it was a tad low...no idea how.

Lessons Learned

Anyways now for lessons learned, the hard way - how to move a tank.

• Firstly when planning, make sure you have pleanty of people. 4 people for a tank 5x2x2 was not enough.
• You can never have too many tubs with lids. We ran out.
• Always have a backup plan - don't rely on people to bring things they say they will.
• Have pleanty of water ready. Have that at the new place already if possible.
• Move what corals and other live stock you can to other poeple tanks, you LFS, wherever you can. This is pretty important. You cannot move a tank without some cycle happening.
• Set up a QT tank beforehand if possible, to treat any sick fish.
• Don't even think about moving a DSB in place unless you can forklift your tank out of its location (assuming similar tank size. Even a 3x2x2 with a DSB would be a challenge with a DSB).
• Have test kits ready. Make sure you can test salinity. The salinity issue is what has likely led to the demise of my clams. My refractometer was with a friend, but I really didn't think it could be out.
• The tank *will* go through a cycle. Just moving LR around can do that. Removing or disturbing a DSB accentuates the issue twofold.
• Murphy will be with you all the way. Put whatever obstacles you can in his way, plan for the absolute worst.

While many of these thing are "Duh!" kinda items, and someone with my experience should have thought of them, the timeframes involved really worked against me. With the whole moving, and the various post move things I had to do (even moving my RO unit took me 3 nights!) it was very hectic. Ultimately it was my own stupidity that has led to this, but my situation was far from perfect. Don't get put in the same situation. People usualy make mistakes when distracted and tired - I was both.

If this helps but one person, it has justified my time spent writing this up.

I would like to thank Aaron, Chris and Ric for helping me move, as it would have gone even worse without them.

I can only look forward to getting my new tank up and running. In some ways its a new beginning, but ultimately it was one very expensive and emotionally draining lesson.