High Tide Aquatics

Best way to break a tank down for "remodeling" without irritating fish too much.

S

sfsuphysics

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Need to do a 'remodel' on my tank. Ideally I'd like to take every piece of rock/coral out of my tank, most of the water, scan the bottom for any think that shouldn't be there ("whoops how'd that piece of copper wire get down there" type stuff), rebuild my reef-scape, then put the water back in, all in a 1 day affair.

However I'd like to minimize fish stress, ideas so far are

1. leave them in there, perhaps even put a rock "cave" in the back corner just so they have some place to hide out

2. remove them, when I'm done, put them back.

3. ????? Other potential ideas would be nice.
 
Mike,

I would take them all out. I think you would stress them even more by leaving them in the tank with all the movement within the tank.
 
Careful if you're going to mess around with the sand/substrate - may want to let things settle before putting livestock back in.
 
I would take the fish out and put a lid on whatever you put them into (so nothing jumps). Do your maintenance and then put them back in.
 
I say drain as much water into a tub, net the fish and put them in the tub (maybe with some clean PVC fitting so the fish have some shelter), do your maintenance, fill the tank back up and return your fish.
 
remove the fish IMO. IME you don't want fish in the way of moving rocks and such.
 
Yeah, considering those fish consist of a couple tangs and a foxface, and I don't need reminding how painful the venom is from that foxface!

Luckily I have more than enough tank space to hold them :D
 
Yeah, guess I should have mentioned the fish types before :D

Still don't know how I'm going to rearrange though (although I'm currently leaning towards one big rock structure in the back corner, and a ton of open space in the front maybe 20/80 ratio), but whatever it is might involve drilling, hydraulic cement, and fiberglass rods.
 
NO matter the fish, I would still recommend removing them.
 
Alrighty, today's moving day! Wish me luck! :D

The infamous before shot, since I'm bound to screw something up (my track record isn't exactly stellar :D)... lots of dead stuff I need to hack off.
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The temporary digs, nice 100g pond liner, figured I might try to tackle that overgrowth of coraline that I have on the acrylic (however ironically not all over the rocks where its nice and pretty AND WANTED), and might be more than a 1 day stay, so wanted some swimming room for the fish... tempted to throw a halide or two over the pond, but a tad on the scared side that it one might fall into it ... so we'll see.
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