Moving Your Tank IV - Set up

Welcome back to Tank Moving IV, you've made it to setting up the tank again! If you've missed the lead up articles, they are all available here on the website.

You've made it to your new home with all your buckets upright, your friendships intact and hopefully even some food in the belly. Now, get your stuff inside! Prioritize your livestock, so it doesn't sit out in hot or cold weather, once it's in, crack buckets open and the cooler too. Make sure to leave enough space to easily carry the tank past and a place to set the tank up! Setting up the aquarium is going to be a lot like the first time (see our article on first time tank setups), with a couple minor changes. If you didn't have time or space to start your new water mixing here at the new place last night, get some mixing immediately. While we always suggest mixing salt for 24 hours before using it, high quality salts like Tropic Marin dissolve very quickly and thoroughly and will be usable as soon as everything is in solution.

Get your aquarium stand and tank where you want them (moving full tanks is a multiple article process!) In picking your locations, you want to avoid direct sunlight, have good access to power and a sink, and be somewhere you'll see it. The living room and the kitchen are our two favorite places for a display. People are awake and engaged, and it's comfortable to sit and look at it. Most people spend very little time in their bedrooms (at least awake) and so an aquarium there often gets less attention than it should.

Once the tank and stand are set up, and you've put the plumbing back together again, you should bring back the rocks and get them in place. It's ok if they aren't submerged, as long as they stay damp. If you have rocks that have corals on them, you're going to need some water in the tank first, so they don't stay out of water for more than a couple minutes. We suggest building your structure first, and then treating rocks that have coral on them more like livestock.

Once your rocks are stable and set, those of you who are using sand need to get it back in. There are two good ways to do this. Our suggestion is to put the sand into the tank before the water. Whether you're using bagged live sand or replacement dry sand (now live and clean from your previous actions) it's going to be wet. Use whatever you want to scoop it into the tank and arrange it. If you're using bagged sand, and you've saved some of your old tank sand, this is the time to mix it back in. Then take the water that was in the buckets with the rock and start filling the tank up with the old water. There will be some stuff in the water as little bits of rock and corraline algae break off in transit. There will also be a bit of detritus that just washed off / out of it because of the agitation of the car ride. Try to leave most of this behind. When pouring, we suggest pouring onto a small bowl on top of a large plate and pour as slowly as possible this will keep your sand mostly on the bottom and in place. We've also seen people cover the sand with plastic wrap during the fill to help limit disruption and this is a fiddly business but can help. The other way to add sand is to fill the water first, then scoop sand into the aquarium in a small scoop of some kind and then gently pour it out as close to the bottom as possible. This also works well, but if option one is done well, there is less suspended sand at the end of the process.

Either way, at the end of this, you should be just about out of water from the old tank. Add all your media back to your sump and use your old sock (or whatever you're using for mechanical filtration.) This will help seed the new tank with all of the bacteria it needs to be cycled and healthy. Now finish filling the tank with the newly mixed saltwater and run the system. Check everything thoroughly for leaks and when it all looks good, let it run for 30 minutes to an hour. It will be a little cloudy, but it should clear pretty quickly. This is a good time for dosing the new aquarium. Add some Nutramar CRIT live phyto, some Nutramar Tigrio live copepods, and some Dr. Tim's One and Only. This will help make up for lost biological balance and jump start the microfauna population in the new display.

At this point, some professionals will add a canister filter to the tank and run diatomaceous earth or DME in it. In a filter that is sized well for the display, DME can polish the water in a tank to crystal clear in less than an hour. In our experience it isn't a good choice for everyday use as it is expensive, and clogs quickly, but wow what a shine!

Once the aquarium is at least mostly clear, and up to temperature, you can start to acclimate your livestock, and we suggest drip acclimation here, especially for your more sensitive stock. The new aquarium water should be the same specific gravity and temperature as the old tank, but the water chemistry is going to be a bit different, and your fish / inverts have gone through a fairly unstable day in regard to temperature swings today as well. See our article on drip acclimation for a re-primer on this topic.

Now it should be time to sit down on the sofa, crack an age-appropriate beverage of your choice, get a piece of the pizza you had delivered and check out the beauty of the display you've made. However, seeing as how the sofa is still in the moving truck, you have other priorities to attend to. Dry up the water you've spilled, wipe down the tank and keep an eye on it while you finish moving in to make sure everything is functioning the way it should.

Over the next two days, keep a tight eye on all your testable parameters. Make sure your temp is stable, and do redundant nutrient testing, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. If you see anything show up, especially ammonia or nitrite, dose the tank with the Dr. Tim's again. You've done a great job in bringing the biology, but not the bio-load, from the old tank, so it shouldn't be an issue, but if it is, it's best to be prepared. In a day or two, we suggest replacing the mechanical filtration media you imported. It will have effectively done its job in helping to seed the new aquarium, but it will also have done more work than a usual week in removing detritus and suspended stuff from a somewhat cloudy tank.

Look, it wasn't easy as moving the kitchen table, but the aquarium is way cooler than the table, and worth the effort, every time. We really hope you took the opportunity to move into a bigger tank in your new place, or at least took the opportunity to make the changes you've been thinking about as far as how your aquarium looks, works and is stocked. Happy aquarium keeping!