Planted discus tank move.

[wobbles]

Hi

Im moving interstate soon. What is the best way to restart a heavily planted discus tank? I'm a little wary about stocking the tank with plants, starting the C02, and chucking 8 6inch discus and 100 cardinals straight in, but I don't see many other options.

So the options I have come up with are:

1. Start the tank with only the fish and substrate, and plant it later after the cycle has finished with low lighting. But that would be about 2 months as it 180 gallon.

2. Start the tank fully planted with no fish, Co2, and ferts, slowly adding fish. But then what do I do with the discus?

Cheers

[ILLUSN]

I had a similar problem when i moved my 450L, what i did was set the tank up ASAP with a double dose of prime and 2 300w heaters. I used a 4x dose of cycle and filled my canister filter with AMRID (I changed the amrid every 2 weeks while i setup a second canister with biomedia, after 2 months i swiched the amrid canister to biomedia). once the temp got to 26 i put the fish in and planted EVERYTHING, I lost 2 yoyo loaches. 4 yoyos, 30 cardinals 4 8-13cm discus 3 bristlenoses and 2 BIG PLEC's survived and are still kicking today (6 months later) I didn't loos any plants though they wern't happy for bout a month to 6 weeks while the tank stabilised.

[ellwa]

When you transport the fish, don't feed them for 24 hours before you have to transport them.

then put them in their own bags, double or triple bagged, and put them into Styrofoam boxes, each bag separated by news paper, so they can't see each other.

when you move the plants, you just need to keep them moist.
When I've received plants from people on line, they're often wrapped in wet news paper, and then put into plastic bags.

alternatively, just put them into plastic fish bags with some water, and as long as its dark, you should be sweet.

I would imagine you'd be taking everything with you, so try and keep gravel and everything wet, and I don't know about your filter, but I'd try and keep it wet to help the cycling process.

I've never moved my tank, but I did strip it down a few months ago, and I just put the fish into large containers with tank water and an air stone in them.

Don't transport the fish is a large box just with water in it, you'll have problems with ammonia and stuff.

there are a few threads about it.

but also remember that when you got the fish from the store when you bought them, they came in bags, and thats who they are transported all over the world.

[wobbles]

Thanks for the replies.

I should have mentioned that the tank is being moved by professionals. Work (navy) is paying for it all. There is a slight possibility that they will also transport all my water, which would be ideal.

The best option I have come up with since the above post, is to sell my discus, (ouch) and buy new ones at the other end. But if I can get the water moved it wont be an issue! Heres hoping!

[ikavia]

Just wondering how the move went and what you ended up doing?