I recently (2 months ago) moved my 26 gal. reef tank to my new apartment. I saved 20 gallons of the water, individually contained my inverts and fish,...basically did everything as carefully as possible. A day after I set it up, all my fish died! The clarkii, royal gramma, and flame hawk were as old as the tank - bout 6 years old. My various polyps, zooanthids, mushrooms, snails, are all thriving. Whenever I tried to add a new fish, it would die within 24 hours. The ammonia never spiked, and the nitates/nitites stayed very low, so I don't know what the problem was. Any insight?
Moving a tank
- Thread starter twitchynose
- Start date
Sorry to hear about your loss. 
Do you use tap water? If you do maybe your tap water has something different in it than the water at your old place. That's the only thing I can think of.
Do you use tap water? If you do maybe your tap water has something different in it than the water at your old place. That's the only thing I can think of.
I recently acquired a 20 gallon saltwater setup from a friend. I moved it to my house and within a day my coral banded shrimp died. I have moved the tank twice since its been at my house and I use tap water. My clownfish is still doing really well. I dont know if it was the stress of the move that caused my shrimp to die or what. I would be checking your water source, that probably is the problem.
I am sorry for your loss, fish are like friends only they cant talk back.
LOL
I am sorry for your loss, fish are like friends only they cant talk back.
LOL
I have read that certain corals emit toxins when stressed. I have never encountered a problem with toxins due to corals, (kids trying to help by cleaning the outside of the tank, yes). A little insight as to how you moved your tank would be useful as well as how far the move was. The farthest I have moved a salt-tank was 180 miles and it took about 5 hours. Everything survived.
My guess would be chlorine levels in the water u added or maybe trace elements such as lead or copper in the tap water, sorry to hear bout the troubles and i hope to god u figure it out.
Even though it didn't happen with a saltwater set up...I moved a 20g from my house (Valencia) to my parent's house (Los Angeles). Both Goldfish died after the move. Everything was fine too. I used 10g of old water and filled the rest with tap, but I used conditioner
for fw u should not just take tap water put it in ur tank and add conditioner. If u put ur water used 4 waterchanges in a 5gal. water jugg than wait 24-36 hrs before using it it will probaly work better with less stress 2 the fish. I just do my waterchange then put water back in the jugg 4 next time(usually 3-4 days in advance).