Moving a Tank

Hey all I'm going to be moving to a new house end of January and am stressed about the do's and don'ts of moving my tank. I have a 75g tank with a 55g sump, about 80 pounds of LR, sand bed is about 4-5 inches deep, mixed softies, LPS and one SPS, and several fish. How should i prepare for the move? Any info and experiences is very much appreciated.

I have like 5- 55g drums and a big trailer. Where are you moving? I can give you a hand if its close by I can hook up one or two of the drums with a heater too.


Edited by jcoulter17 - December 13 2009 at 8:27pm

I just moved a 90 gallon reef over turkey day.  It was a lot of work, and a lot of heavy lifting.  I took every single tote that I had with me. Some were small 5 gallon totes, 2 of them were 50 gallon.  I took all the coral out first and bagged each one seperate and stacked the bagges in one of the smaller totes.  The SPS pieces I pu in bags and into buckets by themselves trying not to break them.  I took all the rock that had stuff growing on it and put it in several different totes with enough tank water to cover ther rocks.  I also did the same thing with all the base rock.  I took a chance and left some water and most all of the sand bed in the tank and picked it up.  (not the best move I know, could have easily broke the tank).  I loaded it all into a suburban and drove it home.  I put the tank back together in the reverse order.  I also had about 60 gallons of water mixed and ready to go.  It took about 2 hours to take the tank down and about 6 to set it back up.  I was pretty lucky and the only piece of live stock that I lost was the sea cucumber.  All of the corals made it, including the SPS.

The sand that was taken out was left at the previous owners house for their nano.  The sand bed is 2 to 3 inches deep.  And I did not replace the sand.  It took 2 people to move the tank.  It was very heavy, I guessing 300 to 350 lbs.