well there are a few ways you can go here depending on your time frame and how much agony you want. I wish I could say that it wasnt painfull, but I have to be brutally honest my move from newark to annapolis was a royal pain and im not working right now, so I had unlimited time to do it. I can understand now why people often sell it all when they move and start fresh…
so as Al mentioned, buckets are key no1. the more the merrier especially if you dont have a half full tank of water to move your stuff too. which is key two. you will want more water!
so without more delay I present how Eric had fun for three weekends:
pre weekend 1: settup temprary tank in annapolis. grudgingly filled it 1/3 full with tap made salt water (fortuntely the TDS is annap is abut 25 out of the tap!! but that goes back to the debate forum) put in a powerhead and heaters.
Weekend 1: brought down 20 gal of RODI, added to the tank, added half of my futute live sand, live rock that was in my sump for storage and cheto. started skimming and put cheto under a 65k compact flourecent light.
Weekend 2: 20 more gallons of RODI, 55 gal up to volume. brought down more liverock that was accesable from my display. including less tempermentle mushroom rock, and GSP rock. installed RODI unit in new place
Weekend 3: brokedown remanider of tank in newark.(8am) drove to annap, unloded livestock from car. broke down temporary tank into rubbermaind containers(12pm). removed temporary tank. installded new tank and got all livestock in. had just enough water to get sump going with skimmer, etc(8pm exhusted as hell).
(day two) rearanged liverock and livestock. had to drain sumo and re level it( tank is still off from what I would like…)
Following weeks(three/four so far) : minor mods to everything. increased flow quite a bit from previos design. modified lighting scheme. etc…
Lessons here- if you have the time I would reccomend the above. if your destination already has your display your in business. it would have made things much easier if I didnt have to break apart two tanks and rebuild it into one…
you will never have enough water! I would say even if you can get your new trank filled with RODI salt water, you should be prepared. if your plan is to move your existing tank to the new one at least think about filling the new tank half full with tap made salt water. its not ideal but its better than no water…
the only casualty I had in my move was a chromis, but that could have been from numerous things. all of my SPS, and zoos, and anemony made it(where my money is).
I beleive this method limited shock as much as possible. doing it in three sections also allowed time for the skimmer/ cheto to pull out any disturbed and newly created nutrients. I was also fortunate to move the final section on a 80degree day so there was little thermal shock to the system as well(drove with the windows down)…
If I could I would do it in sections again. just like this. it really lengthend the pain, but it worked. if I couldnt do this??
well heres my guess at the yank the bandaid aproach(one pre step for my destination and one move step)- I would make sure that my destination tank was full and had fresh aragonite sand in it. I would wash the sand with three rinses in small batches to remove the dust and allow for settling. after that jsut break all livestock down from the old tank into 5 gal buckets. fill one with your old live sand( only use a small portion of it in the new tank though for seeding the new sand), fill other buckets with liverock, break your livestock down into coolers in a thin layer and cover with two inches of water( if its gonna be cool out get a converter in your car to run a 100W heater for the livestock). get to the new place asap, get the skimmer going asap, put in live rock and livestock asap- dont make it pretty you can aquascape later.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Eric