There and back again, a REEF tank tale, by Jnaylor

[Jnaylor]

In August of 2014, my family and I moved from Austin to Cleveland Ohio for work. 

 

This included moving my 185 gallon reef tank setup, with all the inhabitants, rock, coral, fish etc.....Using a combination of strategic planning, friends and family that was willing to help, and a Uhaul truck.. Since I had nearly 8 weeks to design the move prior to the actual move I spent HOURS researching and talking through my plan with Jake over @ RiverCityAquatics. We calculated the amount of hours maximum that the fish could survive in bags dosed with oxygen. How long the drive would take, and what I would need to get the job done.

This is my story.... Tune in this weekend for chapter one of this EPIC story..

J.R.R Naylor...

Edited June 23, 2017 by Jnaylor

[Isaac]

When i moved my biocube29 from denver, all its inhabitants survived and thrived until i didnt maintain it about 2yrs later.  I used 5gal buckets.  1 for rocks, 1 for corals (used "eggcrate" for divers, and 2 for fish.  each had some sand.    i drove straight through.. well, a couple pit stops.  14hrs drive time, 2hrs tear down/pack time, 2hrs unpack/setup.  I used these:  http://amzn.com/B002DVVC4C  (i only paid $8.41 at the time!)  

for a tank your size... im waiting impatiently how you did it!

[Jnaylor]

In the summer of 2014, I was given the opportunity with my job to take a field sales position. Unfortunately that required that my wife, 9 month old son, and fish/dogs move to Cleveland Ohio. When I accepted the position, I was given 45-60 days to relocate, and as you can imagine it was no easy feat planning something of that magnitude across 1361 miles. There were many moving parts and a VERY small relocation budget..

It was one of those things where you think to yourself "I don't even know where to begin"... So I started by talking to Jake @ RCA.... A LOT.... Asking him if I should ship my fish, fly with them, drive them up? Etc.. 

The biggest challenge was that I had absolutely no connection in Ohio.. No fish store that I knew, no friends to help... Oh and it was going to be ONE trip.. No buying a house, getting a new tank running and then moving the tank after a few weeks.. This was literally break down, pack up, drive, and rebuild...

After weeks of planning and changing plans with @Gig 'em @ NDstructible  and Jake, we decided that the best option would be to drive them since I would need to break the tank down and leave on the same day. My wife was SUPER excited about that.. I told her "on the day that we move, my one priority above everything else is making sure that I break the tank down, get everything loaded in a quick time frame and race out the door because we only have 24-30 hours to get this fish out of bags and into water."

Jake and John came out that morning (at the same time the movers were loading a truck with our stuff), and we began to take my tank apart. My dad was at the house in the garage building an "Ark of the Covenant" crate for the new tank, complete we structural support beams and foam wedges to keep the tank from sliding. Luckily I was breaking down my older tank, and moving my new one with new stand and canopy. Jake brought over his pure oxygen doser and we dosed bag and put each fish in separate bags. The balance was very important.. Enough space for air, not too little water or their poop could make the water too toxic. (side note, I didnt feed my fish for a day or two to make sure they would have barely anything to excavate from their bowels).

Here is a breakdown of the contents of the tank, and how they were transported....

Fish in bags, does with oxygen. Put into coolers with ice packs, loaded into the backseat of my sedan... 1 Coral beauty angel, 2 yellow tang,1  blue hippo tang, 1 sailfin tang, 2 clown fish, 1 leopard wrasse, 4 chromis, 1 sand sifting star fish, 1 flame angel fish. (that leopard wrasse literally added like 15 minutes to removing the fish.,.. he kept hiding in the sand and Jake was chasing him through the murky water)

Live rock with any "extras" on it. (mushrooms, palys, zoas, nems) Rock was loaded into 3 separate buckets. Each bucket had an airstone on a hose, run through a hole in the lid, plugged into the converter I picked up from Radio Shack.

The rest of the live rock was loaded into coolers with ice packs, covered in wet newspaper, and put in the trunk of my sedan. I had several buckets and 5 gallon jugs full of fresh salt water that was to use sparingly to douse the rocks and keep them wet on the drive.

Mind you, I also had to bring with me enough water to create temporary space for my fish while the actual tank filled with RO and mixed etc. at the new house in Cleveland... More on that later...

 

As the truck neared becoming full, we loaded the last few things into the car/truck and my brother, father, and I drove off and started the clock... 28 (on the top end) hours till my fish needed to be in their new home... WIth a minimum 22-23 hour drive ahead of us, I knew it was going to be a stressful trip..

 

Tune in tomorrow for Chapter 2!!! Will Jordan and his fish make it to Cleveland without a hitch? Do they get any sleep? Car issues? You will have to check back to find out..

 

Till next time!

 

Jordan

Edited June 26, 2017 by Jnaylor

[Jnaylor]

[Jnaylor]

So I had something crazy weird happen last night... Kinda freaked me out and I thought that was going to lose my Green Mandarin - Superman. Sunday we moved the tank to the new house and all day yesterday the lights were off because I didn't have something to hang them over the trough in the living room. I got home yesterday after work and put together a PVC stand and hung the lights and turned them on. Noticed that I should probably turn my Gyre up a little bit and when I did, all the sudden my green mandarin showed up and was floating vertically and getting blown around by the current. He was swimming erratically, but like he was drunk. 

All the parameters were fine, temp was fine, and my other fish all seemed to be completely fine. I texted @Gig 'em @ NDstructible  frantically and was trying to figure out what was going on. His gills were not swollen, he didn't have any signs of being torn up by the other fish. He was breathing normally, not quickly.

After an hour of researching I stumbled on an article about sleep swimming Mandarins..... Seriously. No joke.. Apparently, Mandarins will sleep so deeply, that one guy was calling it like a coma. No matter what he did, the mandarin was still just bobbing around in his tank. Before I knew what was up, I was literally able to pick him up in my hand and he would just chill there. Since I couldn't be sure what the issue was, I put an airstone in the tank nearby him to see if potentially he was not getting enough oxygen and went to bed.

Check the tank this morning and he was chilling under a rock at the bottom and when I came over to the trough he darted underneath. Guess I have myself a sleep-swimming Mandarin!!

[Jnaylor]

Chapter 2: Missed Opportunities and Disaster Strikes!

Here is where we left off... My brother Chris is driving the Uhaul, buckets with nems, rock, bubblers in the front seat and floor next to him, leads the convoy. My dad and I in my car behind him. Fish in oxygen dosed bags in Styrofoam boxes in the back seat. Live rock wrapped in newspaper in the trunk. Gallons upon gallons of fresh water and saltwater in the trunk as well.... Oh and then literally everything else I own in the Uhaul as well  

We had roughly 1400 miles to cover and only about 25 hours of "safe zone" oxygen left in the fish bags. The plan was to drive straight through, and to nap somewhere along the way for a few hours.

The first few hours flew by. I was excited about the journey, new house, new job, everything. We stopped only a handful of times, checked on the fish, splashed some water on the live rock, grabbed snacks etc.. 

The entire time, my brother and my dad were pointing out things that we could have been doing if it weren't for having to drive straight through. It was in jest, but to this day they still joke about it. "Hey Chris, remember that time we went to the Corvette Museum in Tennessee?!" "Oh thats right, we didn't get to go in!" or "remember how fun it was to underground zipline in Kentucky?!.... Neither do I!"

We made it all the way to Nashville before we had to stop for a nap. (Mind you, because of the tank breakdown/movers, we were unable to even LEAVE Austin until around 5pm.. We rolled into the Hotel around 5:45 in the morning, napped till 7 and then got back on the road.

This is when I started to get nervous... You see, when we got back on the road, about an hour into the drive we get a flashing light on the dash... Temperature alert... Truck immediately begins to slow.

We pull over, check the truck. Low on coolant. GPS to the nearest Autozone. Grab some coolant. Problem solved...

Back on the road... Hour later.... flashing lights... pull over.. Coolant low.

Turns out, there is a decent leak in the coolant line somewhere. So we find yet another autozone and grab 5 jugs of coolant. At this point I am starting to see our progress get squashed and the time to destination creep up...  45 minutes in flashing lights. Fill up... 20 minutes... fill up, call Uhaul... They say they will send somebody out, wait time is 3 hours... Absolutely not going to happen. We are only about 5 hours from the new house and at this point only about 4 hours left in the safe zone....

My brother happens to be very handy and has connections all over the place. While driving the truck, he manages to get a hold of a friend who works at GM who is familiar with the truck and says that this is a known issue and is part of the maintenance plan. Hoses will naturally wear down quickly because, get this.... the frame rail is too close to the hose and with vibration, over time it will SEVER the hose!!!"

We pull over to a gas station and my brother crawls under the truck. Locates the gaping hole in the coolant hose and manages to use the "Fix-a-leak" tape the gas station had to get some kind of temporary albeit not totally leak stopping fix..

We load up on distilled water (no more coolant and store doesn't have any) and get the F out of Kentucky.

Racing against the clock, we were able to go from not being able to go 5 minutes without filling to getting about 1.5 hours at a time. 

 

 

Since we were sooooo late compared to when we intended on getting to the new house, we had to push the movers to the next morning since it was after 8pm. We make it to the house with the truck/fish etc and its go time..

Since it was crunch time, I had used the last hour of the drive to explain the process in detail to my brother and my dad so that the moment we got to the house everybody knew what to do. 

Temporary trough into the house. Water from the trunk into the trough. Check salinity and temp. All good. Rock goes in, fish get a SHORT acclamation and get dropped into the tub. Beer and terrible Chinese food and then we went to the hotel to pass out. (couldn't stay in the house since our stuff was in the truck).

Fast forward a few days. Tank is up an running, I made several trips to the "local" fish store (45 minutes away!) and got all the rock and fish in the new tank.

I only lost my coral beauty angel from the trip. Looks like she has dirtied the water in her bag too much and only last one day. The next loss was one of my yellow tangs and that was because he was so scared and kept swimming by my powerhead.. He ended up getting sucked onto the side of my WP40 and even though I got him off quick he didn't make it.

 

All in all, everything except 2 fish making it was pretty incredible considering what had happened. I gave both of them a proper viking burial and build rafts with sticks, pushed them out into the pond and lit them on fire. We celebrated their life and said good by.

 

Also, I threatened litigation with Uhaul and was able to get reimbursed not only for the fish, but I was also able to get the cost of the truck rental waived since it broke down over and over and over again. 

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by Jnaylor

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

Your tank travels more than I do [emoji12]

[Jnaylor]

2 minutes ago, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

Your tank travels more than I do

HAHAHAH... NOBODY travels more than you do!

[Jnaylor]

More photos from the move and move in...

[Isaac]

and we thought ty's move was ridiculous....   nice planning, allowed for flexibility if stuff arose, which it did.  we want more picts!

[Jnaylor]

Now some pics from the 2.5 years in Ohio!! After that I will share some photos and the story of the trip BACK from Ohio which I completed last September. Tank was set up at my parents house for 10 months until our house sold and we could get a new one here. Which i JUST moved the tank into on Sunday with my brother and @Gig 'em @ NDstructible

Please note, @Gig 'em @ NDstructible  came to visit me around a year or so after we moved to Ohio and helped me redo the aquascape to something WAY cooler.

 

Old.

 

 

New(er)

 

 

Also if anybody wants some Sherman RBTAs... I have a TON still.. Started with 2.. when I moved up there. Just dropped off 8 at RCA, get at me!

.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Jnaylor

[Jnaylor]

8 hours ago, Jnaylor said:

So I had something crazy weird happen last night... Kinda freaked me out and I thought that was going to lose my Green Mandarin - Superman. Sunday we moved the tank to the new house and all day yesterday the lights were off because I didn't have something to hang them over the trough in the living room. I got home yesterday after work and put together a PVC stand and hung the lights and turned them on. Noticed that I should probably turn my Gyre up a little bit and when I did, all the sudden my green mandarin showed up and was floating vertically and getting blown around by the current. He was swimming erratically, but like he was drunk. 

All the parameters were fine, temp was fine, and my other fish all seemed to be completely fine. I texted @Gig 'em @ NDstructible  frantically and was trying to figure out what was going on. His gills were not swollen, he didn't have any signs of being torn up by the other fish. He was breathing normally, not quickly.

After an hour of researching I stumbled on an article about sleep swimming Mandarins..... Seriously. No joke.. Apparently, Mandarins will sleep so deeply, that one guy was calling it like a coma. No matter what he did, the mandarin was still just bobbing around in his tank. Before I knew what was up, I was literally able to pick him up in my hand and he would just chill there. Since I couldn't be sure what the issue was, I put an airstone in the tank nearby him to see if potentially he was not getting enough oxygen and went to bed.

Check the tank this morning and he was chilling under a rock at the bottom and when I came over to the trough he darted underneath. Guess I have myself a sleep-swimming Mandarin!!

 

8 hours ago, Jnaylor said:

Scratch that, he was dead when I got home.... sad day

 

 

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

 

[emoji22] that sucks man. Something seemed odd that you were able to catch him so easily. There wasn't an external signs of disease or anything on him was there?

[Jnaylor]

Just now, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

that sucks man. Something seemed odd that you were able to catch him so easily. There wasn't an external signs of disease or anything on him was there?

Nothing that I could tell...

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

Hm. Could have been the stress of the transition then. Or just plain ol' old age

[Jnaylor]

I think I have decided to get a new Tank instead of using my current tank for several reasons. More than likely this is our forever home, so I would rather have something set up for 10 years. 2, my current tank is 30 inches tall and has a 12" canopy, making it really a challenge to put new pieces on the rock etc.

Looking at an SCA Rimless 150 pre drilled for a Shadow Overflow. Starfire on 3 sides and comes in at a great price, including shipping.. Has it in stock and can deliver by next week.. Seems like a dream. Not going to lie, I am almost dead set on this. How do I convince my wife when I get home later?! lol

 

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

Convince? Good luck! [emoji23]

If anything, highlight the benefits of building one tank now vs another tear down and rebuild down the road. Also that a shorter tank would be more attractive and require less effort from you in maintenance. Less effort=more time. I would argue that not having to tear down the old tank again and build a new one plus all the saved time from not having to get a step stool or tongs to get down into the tank will save a significant amount of time in the future. Now what is your time worth in the future with 3(+) kids, a career, a wife, etc? Certainly worth a couple thousand dollars now I would think!

Plus a new build is fun and exciting and we get to design things perfectly from scratch to make it as automated and flawless as possible [emoji16]

[Jimbo662]

I've had 3 SCA tanks, 50g cube, 66g and a custom 45g lagoon.  Great quality work and Steve at SCA is great to work with.

[Jnaylor]

13 hours ago, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

Convince? Good luck!

If anything, highlight the benefits of building one tank now vs another tear down and rebuild down the road. Also that a shorter tank would be more attractive and require less effort from you in maintenance. Less effort=more time. I would argue that not having to tear down the old tank again and build a new one plus all the saved time from not having to get a step stool or tongs to get down into the tank will save a significant amount of time in the future. Now what is your time worth in the future with 3(+) kids, a career, a wife, etc? Certainly worth a couple thousand dollars now I would think!

Plus a new build is fun and exciting and we get to design things perfectly from scratch to make it as automated and flawless as possible

This is the best! I should just print this and give it to her

We are a go on the new tank! Ordering it today with Steve, great guy.

[Jnaylor]

4 minutes ago, Jimbo662 said:

I've had 3 SCA tanks, 50g cube, 66g and a custom 45g lagoon.  Great quality work and Steve at SCA is great to work with.

Good to hear! I read through a 92 page forum about SCA and they were all very positive. Cant wait to get the new tank!

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

This is the best! I should just print this and give it to her [emoji6]
We are a go on the new tank! Ordering it today with Steve, great guy.

Whoop! LET'S DO THIS!!!! I'll start ordering colored PVC and unions [emoji12]

[Isaac]

+10000 to the unions.

[Jnaylor]

[Jnaylor]

Tank is ordered and Shipped!!!! 

Now its crunch time to get plumbing ordered, Shadow overflow, and a mount for my lights (rimless this time round :))

Also, I am going to clean out the stand, sand and paint with water proof paint and seal the seams.... Any suggestions on paint? Preferably white so I can see the interior well. Or does it end up just looking really nasty?

[Gig 'em @ NDstructible]

Tank is ordered and Shipped!!!! 

Now its crunch time to get plumbing ordered, Shadow overflow, and a mount for my lights (rimless this time round [emoji4])

Also, I am going to clean out the stand, sand and paint with water proof paint and seal the seams.... Any suggestions on paint? Preferably white so I can see the interior well. Or does it end up just looking really nasty?

I've used Kilz Complete oil based paint on my last build and it has held up well so far.