The BIG fish migration - A slow unfolding documentary of moving 14 tanks.

Move 2 1ft tanks over in less than the planned hour.. Helps a lot if everything is there already and no carpentry involved.
All other tanks have settled. I even have my first flowers on the emersed Bakopa growing in the moss tank. although the hc, also emersed, has some dead spots on it. Might be to heat build-up during the move. Will give it a bit of a trim the weekend and all should grow back in time.

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Moved the last 4 small tanks today. No problems. All done as previously. This time around I removed all the wood from tanks and wrapped in clingwrap. Only loosened the Riccia on the cubes wood but it should recover. Also removed all fish from tanks and only left Blue Jelly and Red Cherry shrimp in the water for the move.

Fishroom is getting small now. Reconsidering running the 2 top tanks on the left. Takes up too much space and only serves as scaped tanks. Will see when I move the 4 and 3 ft


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Next stop - optimising the racking and doing some steel work. If you do do it .. make the avg working height that of a desk around 700mm then you can use is as a desk in the future ;- )

MTS is not for the weak.

Looks good, glad the move is going so well.

Later Ferdie

 

Thanks Ferdie. By this time next week it should be done.
Slight change of plans regarding the keeping of the fish while I'm bussy with the set-up on the 3 and 4 ft. I'm getting the 8 x 1,5ft on friday. Will have them running by the evening. When the fish get there I will split them up between the tanks. Will reduce the stress on them this way so I don't need to worry about them and rush the scaping.

At this moment I'm seriously considering moving some of the tanks. Getting way to crowded in there. Eventhough I love the 2 low tanks I think they must go into storage, for now. The cube, bottom left, and Blue Jelly tank, right, will go on the bottom of the 3 ft stand. Will have to wait for the 4 ft to be in first as I have to move the 3 ft stand to get the 4 ft in.

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One fish missing after the moveOut of all the fishes it had to be my male Psuedomugil Gertrudi. Now I will have to find the 2 ladies some company. Don't have any idee how he disapeared. Tank has a glass covering the top with a 10mm opening on the one side for the hob.

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Moved the 4ft yesterday, rescaped and transferred the fish this morning. No fish deaths or insedents.

Took me about 3 hours to remove fish, wood, plants and substrate from tank and do the move. All wood was wrapped in cling wrap. Ceramic rings from sump cleaned and place in bucket, with lid, submerced in tank water. Plants in similar bucket with tank water. Used 3 buckets for fishes. Rainbows, Loaches and Cories. Filled 3/4 with tank water and placed lids on. Substrate is pfs cap and potting soil. Substrate is about 4 years old and still gives good growth on plants so I re-used it, for the aditional benificial backteria, as well as I don't want a substrate issue at later stage. Split the 2 into seperate buckets. Loaded and moved. Luckelly for me I had an extra pair of hands to help where possible.

When we offloaded I placed the tank and sump on the stand but left it for a while as the fishes needed to be moved from the bucket to the 8 x 1.5ft tanks, for the guppy challange, first. I set these tanks up on friday afternoon and added some backteria to them, all have air filters. Split the Rainbows into 2 tanks, Clown loache in 1, other loaches in another, Cories split over various tanks. Covered the tanks with towls to reduce stress to the fishes. Also did not feed them yet.
By 11:45 last night the rescape was done and I filled up the tank and checked that everything is working properly without any leaks. No problems with anything. I double dosed on water conditioner as well as backteria. Let the tank run and kept on checking it for about a hour. When I was happy that all is well I took a deserved rest.

By 6 this morning I was up as normal. Tank still cloudy but no problems. Added a sirculation pump with some batting to clear up the tank. At about 8 I started returning the fish. No deaths or any struggling fish. All fishes look happy with new set-up. Was extremely surprized to see the Clown loaches in full colour and not grey, even after returning them to the tank.

Must say that I am so happy that everything has worked out good. All the planning helped as well as the spare tanks for holding the fish in. I think this has reduced the stress to them, as well as for me, knowwing they are in stable conditions while I could take my time with setting up the tanks.

Photo's will follow as soon as tank is clear. I have desided that the 2 tanks, in front of the window, will be taken down for the timebeing. They might look good but the use up so much space that they are actually in the way at the moment. Will give it a few months and then start planning on getting them going again.

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Glad you have your fish room sorted now, and there were no major problems.
Looking forward to the before and after pics of the newly scaped 4ft tank.

 

Glad all went well @Pierré Schoonraad .. it was no easy task and im sure you must be SO glad its done!!

 

Almost done. Still need to move the Blue Jellie tank, inside the room. Just finished with the breading rack. 12 tanks running, 8 x 1.5ft (225 high) and 4 x 1ft. Now I need to move the breeding fish to their allocated tanks. Then I'm done for today. Tomorrow morning I will move the 3 ft tank and rescape. Then only will I be done.

Eventhough it was a terrible job getting everything here, I'm satisfied that everything went so smooth. Total losses so far is abou 30 red cherry shrimp, pump clogging up, and 1 Psuedomogil Gertrudai, body never recovered. If it was not for this forums knowledge, which I sucked up over time, I don't think I would have even atempted this 2 years ago. To any noob reading this, remember that there are people here with years of knowledge and experiance that can make your life much easier if you listen to them. To all the pro's thanks for sharing your knowledge, with people like you this hobby can grow. Thanks.

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So all tanks are in and running. 2 x small tanks removed as well as the crap pallet stand they were on. Now I have space to move around at least and apreciate the tanks as well as being able to work on the breeding rack without getting splinters in my back. I will post a foto of the completed room as soon as everything is sorted, still a slight mess at the moment.

Here is the before and after shots of the 4ft. The before foto was taken in October 2016. One big jungle and the wood in the tank wasn't showing as much as I wanted them to. There is a new piece of wood in the now foto. I collected this piece almost 2 years ago just waiting for the rescape. I had to cut down this 3m piece of wood so that it will fit into the tank. My idea behind the new scape was to replicate a fallen tree in a river/dam. It might not look like it but there is much more open swimming space for the Rainbows. Good hiding places for the Corries in the plants, on the right. And more than enough burrowing places for the Loaches with all the wood. I drilled various big holes in the back of the wood, as well as some of the older pieces already had holes in the.
Before

Now


This is wat the 3ft looks like now. Again I used a lot of wood, with the Panaque in mind. I planted all the leftover plants of the 4ft in here. I will know by tomorrow morning if this is to the satisfaction of the Panaque. If all plants are floaters I will have to Google a bit on how to have a way around her uprooting everything.


Let me.know what you think.

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Those tanks look good.
Hope that 3ft is to the satisfaction of the fussy resident.

 

Thanks @Reedfish and @Pezulu. I'm holding my fingers crossed but she is waiting for lights out
I just wonder where she will start snacking first?

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Ok so finally I can end of this chapter. Fish room has been going great. Here is final photo's of what it looks like now.
Was a lot of hard work to get to this point but also a lot of satisfaction in seeing it all falling in place.

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awesome fish room, what are you doing in the rack? Can't see if there's anything in them from the pics.

 

BoelderBeestie beat me to saying AWESOME!!!
Glad you have everthing sorted, and you are happy with the outcome.
Wish I had the space to do something like that.

 

Thanks @BoelderBeestie and @Pezulu. The rack is for the slow guppy challange as well as 8some shrimps. The set-up is as follows. Top row l to r. Grow out tanks, females from f1, males from f1, females from f2, males from f2 as well as some Pumpka n patch shrimp. Middle row breeders, female 1, f2, f3 and f4. Bottom row, grow out tank, females from f3 and Blue jelly shrimp, males from f3 and some Blue carbon shrimp, females from f4 and Cherry shrimp, males from f4 and the cull shrimp

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Awesome @Pierré Schoonraad !! Well worth all teh work.

I have to say i LOVE the tank with the rainbows!!

 

Thanks @MariaS. Yes the 4ft is where it all started and the rest followed.

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