LBDave
thought it would be a good idea to document the move but with getting settled and all I havent had time to post the thread.Im sure there are many different ways to go about moving fish but this is what worked for me.
Matteus
maybe you can apply and improve on some of this when you make your move.1st thing i did was remove and dry the sand since i didnt know how readily available garnet would be in my area. Turns out there an abrasives dealer 20 min from my new home lol.
Next we prepared the bins. I used 2 55 gallon totes. One to house the bichirs for a few days before the actual move. The other sat in the back seat of my. With the lack of help and a bad back lifting the bin even with a small amount of water and fish was out of the question.
We set the bins up with air pumps (added a second pump), cheap digital thermometers and a diy egg crate heater guard.
Moved all the fish and bio.
Dried the tank and sump out so it would stink up the moving truck.
When it came time for the actual move i used a 25 gal bin to temporarily hold the fish while i doubled up the bins for the car ride. PBB ended up jumping and took a little trip under the car lol she was fine.
Thank god i used a tarp and 2x4 to level the bin out. The mvp of the move was the ratchet straps. All in all there was minimal spilling.
I also chose to go with an inverter and my existing air pumps. The battery powered ones are just too weak for my liking. I also didnt want to deal with potentially changing batteries.
We had to stay in a hotel for two nights. The plan was to move the fish into the hotel room but that quickly got nixed. I ended up leaving them in the car and running the car/inverter during the day. I had to use the crappy battery powered pumps at night. Might have been unnecessary but i was very concerned with the congicus. IME they do not travel/ship well and you all know how much i love my congi's.
The fish sat for another week and a 1/2 in the bin while we got settled and unpacked.
All in all i think it was a success even though we lost our little dat. He did fine the whole time. Even stayed stable through the whole ordeal. During the 1st wc in the new house i found him crush under a bag of bio. He must have been hiding and the bag shifted, trapping him. I under estimated how strong these bichirs really are. They were easily moving and burying themselves under those heavy bags of bio.
