Moving Day

Well, I am super excited because my boyfriend and I are moving to a new place on Monday. One thing I am not looking forward to, however, is moving our fish tank. I have added a few photos of our tank to show what kinds of things we are moving. The tank we have is 55 gallons and is such a pain to move. You have to be very careful not to hurt anything while in the process of transferring it.

We will first have to get several buckets out and fill them a third full of water (water from the tank), then transfer the fish, anemones, shrimp and rocks into them. The shrimp gets its own bucket because if the shrimp is confined in a small area with the fish it will fight with them. The rocks also get their own buckets so that the fish won’t be squished in the move. Last, the anemones will also have their own bucket. Once we have everything carefully transferred into the buckets, we drain all of the water out, saving 2-3 buckets of the water. Then we take the sand out and save ¾ bucket to put back in when we set it back up.

Once the tank is empty, it is crunch time. The tank is heated to keep the water at a curtain temperature for the fish and since it’s so cold out, we must hurry and get the tank to the new house before the water in the buckets becomes too cold. If the water gets too cold the fish can go into shock and die, not being used to the cold temperature.

Then the final step is setting it back up as soon as we arrive to the new house, which entails: Arranging the tank light on the wall above the fish tank; Filling the tank back up and adding a measured amount of salt to the water; setting up the filters and heaters; letting the water warm up to the right temperature and letting the water settle; arranging the rocks in the tank; putting the anemones back in the tank; then releasing the fish and shrimp back into the tank.  

It’s such a long process, to move a salt water tank, but in the end it is worth it.