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Moving A Tank... Advice?


DreaminginBlue

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I am getting some lovely Blue Dream Shrimp from @dazalea next week, and I can't wait! However, I'm going to have to move the tank in a few months from my office to a different building. I'm wondering how I should go about this?

1) Put the shrimp in my ten gallon at home, which is cycled with a small sponge filter but very sparsely planted and not their intended home, then move them to the office tank after it has been relocated.

or

2) Put the shrimp in the office tank, which is setup with a HOB with a sponge prefilter, densely planted, and full of spiderwood for them to climb all over. Then, when it's moving day, just drain the tank most of the way and move it with them in it or transport them in another container.

I'm sure I'm just worrying too much, but I really want to make sure they are safe and happy and the move doesn't hurt them at all! I'd be very grateful  for any advice.

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Glad you asked this! I just finished moving a couple miles and I have to say it wasn't fun but I was patient and all worked out really well.

 

To begin I was buying a house before our current house sold, therefore this allowed me PLENTY of time and no rush in breaking down and setting up aquariums at both residences. 

 

I had five shrimp tanks I broke down and combined to two. I then setup two of these aquariums at the new house, I actually kept the substrate in these two while moving, but drained 95% of the water. Moved the aquariums from the stand to a bench we had, then the bench to the car, then the aquarium off the bench into the car. Once arriving at the house, we moved the aquarium to the bench, then the bench to the room, and then moved the aquarium onto the stand. Added half new RODI water to these aquariums, I remineralized the water to my desire GH range, but not the desired TDS. Pick your day as you will need all of it, or at least in my case. 

 

First step in breaking down aquariums was remove all hardware except lights, so you can see the shrimp. Drain water halfway down and keep, I added this water to two 20g Brute trashcans and went ahead and took it to newly setup aquariums. After that, I drained the remainder of the water to about 10% and began catching shrimp. Unfortunately for me at the time, I have hundreds of tiny baby shrimplets so this part was excruciatingly long. I separated the two aquariums' shrimp into two buckets, took the buckets to new house and added them directly to aquariums. After that I simply broke down and transported the hardware to the new house in the same fashion as the old.

 

Hope that helps! All of my shrimp are doing well. Unfortunately leading up to the initial move and combining aquariums and neglecting parameters I did lose some shrimp, even one of my galaxy pintos:( Small loss in the grand scheme of things but never easy.

 

DETAquarium

 

 

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Thank you so much for the reply. I'm thinking perhaps I'll just put them in the office tank and move it as you described?  That way the shrimp aren't transported too far. The new office building is only about 15 minutes from the old one.

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ya I wouldn't put them in the home and then try to net them all because you will miss the small shrimp. in a month they will probly have baby's and I can tell you trying to net all the babys is a no go just put them in the office tank to start with. just get a home depot bucket for the water you take out on moving day and replace it when you get it set up 

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I've had a shrimp survive a 200mile move in a tank I thought was empty and was damn near drained dry.. sometimes they can be little survivors. If you put them in the tank at home first you will probably miss a couple. I would put them in the office tank, drain it mostly, then move it.

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  • 3 months later...

Sounds like you've got it figured out!

If possible, I would suggest moving the old water back in and letting the tank filter through it for a couple hours before plopping the shrimp in. The move might disturb the substrate, causing a possible ammonia spike or release of other nasties. Hope it goes well!

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@aotf Thank you!

It took all day to move the tank. I drained some water into a bucket, caught as many shrimp as I could, and then vacuumed the substrate a bit to make sure it wouldn’t kick up gross stuff. I left a little water in there for the tiny shrimplets I couldn’t net.

I made sure to keep the filter media wet and added a bit of baterial starter in case. I’ll go back to the office to check on them today.

I culled extensively when putting the shrimp from the bucket back into the tank. I’ve never culled before, but I did my best to pick the shrimp with the brightest and darkest colors and make sure there were some males in there too. The lower quality blue dreams will come to the tank at home, in the off chance they spit out some bright ones later on (they have those genes).

There were some oddballs I wanted to ask about. I know sometimes the babies seem clear when they’re very young, but there was an adolescent with almost no color. There were also some reddish shrimp, as well as what look like very pale blue bodied red rili. All the “oddballs” were adolescents. I pulled them out and they’re going to go into a five gallon spare tank I have to see what happens with them. My question was, are they colored this way because somehow a red cherry has contaminated the gene pool? I did have one hitchhiking red cherry get into the tank from my house, but I took him out before adding the blue dreams. Or, are they colored like so because of random genetics, and the fact that they don’t breed entirely true?

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  • 2 weeks later...

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