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There comes a point in every hobbyists life when you’ll need to move your saltwater aquarium. This happened to me recently. I had to moved my tank a few hours away. Moving a saltwater aquarium is far more complex than moving a freshwater and significant care needs to be taken in order to avoid or minimize loss of fish, corals and other livestock.

I did great deal of research prior to moving my 75g tank including placing a post over on the 3reef forums to obtain advice from the folks over their that I’ve come to completely rely on. What follows below is the process I used to move my tank. There are many different ways and I am in no way guaranteeing my will work for you. Fortunately it was pretty successful for me. I only lost 2 corals and is purely my fault. You’ll see why below.

Equipment needed to move your saltwater aquarium

Here’s what you’ll need to move your saltwater tank, at least with my process:

• 5 Gallon buckets with lids
• Battery Air Pumps
• Submersible Heaters
• A large truck, SUV, or trailer - assuming you have a large tank

Obviously, you’ll need one bucket for each 5 gallons of water. You’ll need one battery powered pump for each 5 gallon bucket that will contain fish, corals or other livestock.

A few days before your move

Go ahead and get your supplies and equipment together. It’s better to have a few extra buckets than not enough. Also, consider whether you plan to remove your sand bed or leave it in the tank. For anything more than a 75 gallon tank, I would strongly advise removing your sand bed. The tank is heavy enough without the additional weight of the wet sand.

Here are just a few things to plan out and consider:

• Have some friends available to help you life the aquarium and stand. Trust me, it’s not worth the risk of trying to handle it yourself. One slip and well…you know the rest.
• Get plenty of batteries for your pumps. I ran mine for about 24 hours on a single set of batteries, but I had plenty of extras just in case.
• Write down (or print this article) so that you have everything all planned out step by step. Remember, the longer your fish are out of the tank the more at risk they are of not making it.
• Plan things out in advance. Think through how you are going to transport the fish, tank, lights, pumps, filters, skimmers, and buckets. I rented a U-haul trailer just to carry my tank and fish.
• Find or buy a few plastic containers to carry your equipment in. Boxes work well for dry goods, but you’ll want the plastic containers for any of your wet equipment.
• Packing supplies. I used bubble wrap and moving blankets to wrap my lights, filters, cooling fans, etc. to protect them when we move.

The day of the move

We had a moving company move us, but if you are moving yourself I would strongly advise that you get some friends and family to help you move. Your main job and focus should be on the aquarium. Before starting to actually disassemble the aquarium, go ahead and pack up all of your dry goods and anything not needed to keep the aquarium running.

You’ll want to wait until the very last minute to start the actual process of disassembling the aquarium. Make sure you have all of your supplies handy: buckets nearby, a siphon tube or pump, lots of towels and a helper. Once your ready, here’s the steps I did when I moved my tank:

1. Turn off all of your lights, unplug and remove them. I have an “all in one” light fixture, so I wrapped mine up in a moving blanket to protect them.
2. turn of your heater(s). Don’t remove them yet! Let them cool off for a bit before removing them. Place them in one of the plastic containers as well.
3. Turn off all of your filter equipment and pumps. Drain it and place it in one of the plastic storage containers.
4. Now you’ll start draining the water. If you have live rock, fill up your buckets half way then add live rock until the water is a few inches from the top.
5. Continuing this process until either all of the live rock is removed. If you don’t have live rock, once you get to about 6″ of water left, stop
6. With the live rock out of the way and a minimal amount of water, now’s time to catch the fish. Using a net, catch the fish and place them in a bucket of water. Be sure to place your fish based on their compatibility with other. I put my clowns and their anenome in one bucket, my other fish in another, and my inverts in a 3rd along with my corals. As soon as your fish, corals and inverts are in the buckets, hook up your battery powered air pumps. Also add the submersible heaters. Don’t turn them on yet though. Wait about 15 minutes.
7. Drain the remaining water. If you are going to remove the sand bed or substrate, go ahead and scoop it out into it’s own buckets.
8. Place lids on all of the buckets but the ones with your livestock. For those, cut or drill a hole in the lid for the airline to go through. Cut another hole to allow the air in the bucket to vent out as well. Trust me, I learned this one the hard way!
9. Now it’s time to load up. I’d recommend wrapping the aquarium with a blanket to protect it.

As I said, I rented a U-Haul trailer. I loaded the aquarium loaded with by sand bed into the trailer along with the stand. I then placed the buckets of water into the trailer as well along with my dry goods and the plastic containers. I put the fish up in my truck with me. It was a bit cool that day and I wanted to keep them as warm as possible. I also had my kids riding with me to keep an eye on them.

Setting your tank back up after moving

We closed on our new home at 10:00 the next morning. Overnight the fish and live stock stayed with me. We went straight from the closing to our new home where I immediately began setting up the tank. Here’s the steps I followed:

1. Set-up the stand and tank
2. Began adding water. This turned out to be a bit of a problem for me. It had gotten colder overnight than I had anticipated. In hindsight, I should have placed a portable heater in the trailer overnight to keep the water temperature in the bucket nice and warm. The water I was poring into the tank was about 40 degrees. I immediately placed all of the heaters I had in the tank, waited 15 minutes and turned them on as I continued to pour the water in. As soon as the water level was high enough, I installed my pumps, filter, and protein skimmer. The water was REALLY cloudy.
3. I also started adding the live rock while pouring in the water was well. With the cloudy water I couldn’t see to place it, so I just laid it in there.
4. Once all of the rock was in, I topped the tank off with the remaining water.
5. I then installed my lights and immediately turned on my Metal Halides to assist with warming up the water
6. Once the water was up to temperature and had cleared up some, I added my fish and other livestock to the tank.

Things I would do different next time

Overall the move went very well. I did have some die off, but as I said earlier due to a few mistakes I made. So let me overview those:

• I didn’t plan well for the overnight cool temperatures and as a result it took my water a good 4-5 hours to warm up. Fortunately I had the extra heaters, otherwise it would have been even longer than that. As a result of the cold temperatures, I had a bit of die off on my live rock. Not bad, but more than I wanted. I wanted zero!
• I placed my “hard corals” in a bucket of their own that wasn’t heated. As a result I lost both of them. I should have treated them just like the the rest of my livestock.
• To make the move easier, I kept my sand bed in the tank. I should have removed it and placed it in buckets and washed it before putting it back into the tank. The sand bed was filthy. While washing it out probably would have caused a small cycle, it would have been worth it.

The tanks doing great. I’ve had a bit of an algae bloom in the past few weeks, but I expected that with the bit of die off I had. My nitrates are up and feeding the algae. I’m doing frequent water changes until the levels come down.

Have you ever moved your tank? What process did you use? Did you have any die off?

Photo by: Marion Doss

Within the first month of setting up my 75 gallon saltwater tank, I had hair algae. Just a little at first, but then it seems to almost take over the tank within just a few days.

If you aren’t familiar with hair algae, consider yourself blessed. Hair algae is this dark green hair like algae that grows on your sand bed, rocks, filters, power heads, snails, etc. Green hair algae seems to grow on just about anything and I swear if you watch it long enough I think you can even see it growing!

I purchased a clean-up crew from Saltwaterfish.com consisting of various types of algae eating snails, along with a lawnmower blenny. They made a dent in it, but it seemed to come back almost as quickly as the clean-up crew consumed it.

Turns out, green hair algae is a common problem in saltwater aquariums, but not normal. The most common cause is something called phosphate (PO4). Phosphates serve as the primary food for bad algae such as hair algae. Phosphates come from different sources, but primarily unfiltered tap water and common saltwater aquarium products like carbon, sea salt mixes, and various buffers.

My initial hair algae problem was due to using tap water to make up my saltwater mixture. Don’t EVER use tap water in a saltwater aquarium. Dechlorinated or not, tap water contains minerals and chemicals that will negatively impact you water quality. My original hair algae problem was resolved by both beginning to use RO/DI water and by maintaining near perfect water conditions and mineral levels. This is achieved by frequently testing your water, adjusting your various chemical levels with supplements, and by doing frequently water changes. Within a week, my hair algae died and was gone. My tank stayed pristine for weeks. It was gorgeous, beautiful white sand and Coraline covered rocks.

The return of the Hair Algae

Some weeks later, I noticed few small areas of hair algae starting to appear again. I didn’t think much of it as I hear of many very experienced hobbyists having small hair algae blooms here and there. Well, a few weeks later and my tank was again covered with it. All of my live rock and sand is covered with 2-3″ strands of dark green hair algae!! This hair algae was far worse than the last, the stuff was everywhere.

What did I do wrong? Why did it return? At first I didn’t have a clue. But I started aggressively attacking it by:

• Purchasing a Clean-up Crew - I purchased a clean-up crew consisting of snails, hermit grabs, lettuce nudi-branch, and some sea cumbers. I also bought another lawnmower blenny.  Check out Saltwaterfish.com, I’ve had great success with them.
• Doing frequent water changes - I started changing 10-15% of my water weekly, both to reduce phosphate levels and to replenish the tank with necessary nutrients.  I wrote about a how I do water changes a while back.
• Reduced my feeding - I cut back on how much I was feeding, switching to every other day rather than daily. I also payed close attention to not feeding them more than they could eat in 5 minutes.
• I wet skimmed - I lowered the collection cup on my skimmer to begin wet skimming instead of dry skimming. This would remove more nutrients from the water and hopefully pull out any algae spores in the water.
• Filled my canister filter with Phosban - Phosban is a phosphate absorbing product. I filled two micro bags full and placed them in my canister filter to absorb any excess phosphate that might be feeding the algae.
• Purchased a TDS Meter - I also bought a TDS meter to ensure my RO/DI water was pure. The meter showed 3, which isn’t perfect but well under the required 5. TDS meters are inexpensive and will provide a level of confidence on the quality of water you are placing in your tank.
• Manually pulled the algae out - I had read that an effective way to remove hair algae was to physically pluck it out. We did this almost nightly for weeks. It did help, but didn’t solve the problem.

None of these things made a difference, at least not to the algae. I’m sure my water quality overall went way up which made my fish very happy, but the algae continued to grow. Our tank looked gross. The biggest problem was that we were in the process of trying to sell our house, and my aquarium is one of the first things you notice when you walk into the house.

Nitrates

I headed back out on the internet and continued reading about hair algae and the causes. I’m not sure how I missed it, but while Phosphates are on of the main causes of hair algae, high nitrate levels are as well. I continued to read focusing on nitrates and trying to identify the cause of the high nitrate levels. Turns out, canister filters and their filter media can serve as Nitrate beds and cause high levels of Nitrates. I immediately turned off my canister filter.

We continued manually removing the green hair algae and low and behold it stopped coming back. What we couldn’t remove slowly started turning brown and presently there is only a small amount left. It will take some time for the decayed algae to go away and my tank to look pristine again, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. The canister filter was the problem all along!

Ongoing, I won’t be running my canister filter all the time. I’ll only use it for short periods of time to polish the water, run carbon or other buffering products (like Phosban). Going forward, I’ll rely solely on my protein skimmer and live rock to keep my tank clean and filtered.

I hope I never see hair algae in my tank again!

I’ve had 2 false Percula clown fish almost since the very beginning of starting my 75 gallon aquarium. My first fish was a blue damsel that lived through the initial cycle and is still alive today, although a far fatter than he used to be. My clowns were the next two additions to the tank.

It was really a toss up as to which were my favorite fish, my 2 Percula clowns or my flame red hawk fish. Unfortunately my decision was made for me last week when “Red” as we called him was found dead one morning. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I guess fish sometimes die for no apparent reason. Losing him or her was tough though as both myself and my family grew to really like him. If you are looking for a fish with some beautiful color and personality, get a red hawk fish. I swear “Red” was more like a dog than a fish!

Anyway, back to my clowns. I tried my first anemone about 3 months ago, a blue Condylactis. They were really inexpensive at the local pet store and I was really hoping my clown fish would host in them. They didn’t even give it a second look. Each day I’d wake up hoping I would find them nestled in it’s testicles, but not such luck.

Saltwaterfish.com had a special a month or so ago on Curly Q Anemones. I didn’t think the clowns would like them, but again they were inexpensive and neat looking. I figured it wouldn’t hurt. They arrived and took up their positions in my tank.The clowns?  They could care less. They hung out by the same rock outcropping in my reef they had been at for more than a year. By the way, the Curly Q Anemones aren’t near as pretty in my aquarium as I thought they would be. A few people have mistaken them for algae! Personally, I wouldn’t purchase them again.

A carpet anemone

I was off from work today as my wife had what we thought was going to be an all day commitment. Turns out she only needed to stay for the morning, so we headed out to grab some lunch together while the kids were in school. On the way home, we stopped off at the local pet shop. They had a beautiful purple colored carpet anemone. It was a little steep in price, but not too bad. It looked very healthy, so I decided to try one more time to find my little clowns a “house” to live in.

Christmas Tree Rock

While having the clerk fish out the anemone, my wife found something pretty neat called a “Christmas Tree Rock“. Its a rock covered in coral, that contains what looks like multi-colored and tree shaped feather dusters. I had never heard of this before. I’ve learned the hard way a few times to not purchase anything without researching it first, but since it was the last one they had I didn’t want to miss out on this little find either. So I pulled my Blackberry out and did a little surfing.

While Christmas Tree Rock aren’t easy to keep, they didn’t seem to hard either. Just basic filter feeders that require low light and don’t like to be in an area with too much motion. I had the perfect place in my 75gallon, so I asked the clerk to bag up the Christmas Tree Rock as well.

In the tank

I floated them both for about a half hour and opened the bags. I did the Christmas Tree Rock first, placing it in that perfect location. I them opened up the Carpet Anemone. I poured both the anemone and water into the net. Another lesson I learned a while back is to NEVER put water from the pet store in your tank. With Anemone minus water in the net, I placed it in the tank, below where my clown fish hang out.

The Carpet Anemone didn’t land exactly where or how I wanted it (my wife said it looked like it was showing it’s butt to us), so I reached in to move him. Unlike other anemones I’ve dealt with with in the past, these guys are sticky! REAL sticky. So instead of using my hand, I used the net to position it.

We watched things for a while. The clowns were curious, but didn’t look like they intended to go too near it. My kids came home from school, and we all gathered around the tank watching the new additions. A bit later, my wife and I headed to the grocery store to pick up some dinner.

Upon returning we were greeted at the door with a loud “Dad! The clown fish are in the Anemone!!!!”. What??? No way!!! I rushed to the tank and sure enough both clowns were in the anemone. The female in particular. She was having a blast, nuzzling it, rubbing herself all around in it and cleaning it out. The male kept trying, but she would push him out. He was a persistent little guy though and she finally let him in.

I was grinning from ear to ear. My little clowns had finally hosted in an anemone, and not just any anemone a really beautiful and rather large carpet anemone. I asked my wife to snap some pictures. My favorite is the second picture in this article.

Ah, the joys of a saltwater aquarium! I know they are tough, and sometimes I just feel like quitting, but it’s moments like these that make it worth it. They are so cute!