Moving an aquarium across town without losing a fish

The week before

Stop adding anything new. No fish, no coral, no fertilizer changes. Do a normal water change five or six days out, not the day before, so the tank is clean but settled. Cut feeding to once a day and skip it entirely for the last twenty four hours. Fish travel better with an empty gut and the water stays cleaner in the buckets.

Measure the new spot. A filled 90 gallon tank weighs close to a thousand pounds, and a second-floor condo in Boca Raton or an older house in Lake Worth Beach may need the floor checked. Find the outlets, find the nearest water source and look at where the afternoon sun lands. A west-facing window will grow algae on the new glass within a month.

What never travels in the tank

Water. A glass tank is built to be supported evenly from below. Carry it with even an inch of water sloshing in the bottom and the seams take stress they were never designed for. The sand or gravel comes out too, or at most stays as a thin damp layer. Deep substrate that has sat undisturbed for years holds pockets of gas that will foul the water the moment it is stirred.

Rock, plants and filter media ride in their own containers, under tank water, out of the sun. The bacteria that keep ammonia at zero live on those surfaces, not in the water column. Let the media dry out for an hour and the tank has to cycle all over again, with the fish in it.

How the fish ride

Small fish go in bags with tank water and air, inside a cooler or an insulated box so the temperature holds. Larger fish and anything with spines go in buckets with lids. Corals sit in shallow containers so they are not stacked on each other. In South Florida the car is the danger, not the distance. A sealed car in July climbs past a hundred degrees in minutes, so the fish go in last, the air conditioning runs the whole way and nobody stops for lunch.

Setting back up

Level the stand first, then the tank, before a drop of water goes in. Rock and hardscape go back, then the old water that was saved, then fresh water mixed and matched to the same temperature and, for saltwater, the same salinity. Filters and heaters start, the water clears, and only then do the fish come out of their bags, floated and acclimated the way they would be on the day they were bought.

Keep the lights off the first day, feed lightly for a week and test ammonia and nitrite daily for the first several days. A small bump is common. A climbing number means the bacteria took a hit and a water change is due.

When to hand it off

Anything over about 50 gallons, anything in a wall, anything with a sump, and any reef tank are moves worth not doing alone. Jason moves tanks across Palm Beach County and north Broward as part of his installation work, and the same visit can swap in a bigger tank or newer equipment if the move was the excuse you were waiting for.