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* This article first appeared in "Livebearers", journal
of the American Livebearers
Association.
The other day a friend at a local fish store told
me about a customer that was concerned about moving a tank of
fish across town,
convinced that if it were possible, great losses
were inevitable. My friend wanted to share this with me to point
out that there
is a lot of fear about moving fish; many simply
forget that fish are often shipped from around the world to the
pet shop in the first
place.
I recently accepted a job offer in Colorado, and
I was living in Northern California. I had then about 20 tanks
of fish, all doing well
in a breeding setup with adults, new young and
fish growing out. I knew the move overall would be a good one
for the fish, once
they were settled. I would be gaining a large
unfinished basement, and leaving a fishroom that was in a back
“mother in law” type
house that that would bake in the 100 plus
Sacramento summer temperatures. I am a teacher and the move
would need to happen
over the summer, and as turned out, the fish were
taken out to Colorado across the Nevada desert in 103 degree
temps!
At first I brainstormed what my options were, and
up until shortly before the move assumed that I would cull down
to my most
“important” fish in each line (the breeders, new
young, best looking adolescents) and ship them. I would drive
out with the tanks
in a rented van, set everything up, and my wife
would box them up and send them out. I would receive them and
get them
established. When it came time to actually do it,
the cost was wildly prohibitive. At best, in a standard under 10
lb. box I could
get 2-3 trios, and there were nearly a hundred
fish to ship…
________________________________________________________________________________________________
So here’s what happened and the factors that
needed to be taken into consideration. When moving fish there
are only a few
variables that must be watched, otherwise the
fish will die, plain and simple. Their being uncomfortable is a
given; they will be
in new surroundings, with lighting and
temperature differences, and probably a lot of movement. Their
immunity will be affected
from not only the stress of the circumstances
required during the move, but as a rule it is also best not to
feed them during this
process. Water changes and filtration, if they
happen, will be haphazard and difficult. The move must happen as
quickly as
possible. Upon the completion of the move they
will be put into new tanks that may not be cycled properly, with
a likelihood of
water at the new location with different ph,
water hardness etc.
Our house was being put on the market, and the
quaint charming little back house could not look like a medieval
laboratory
(as our realtor referred to it), so the racks
etc., had to come down. As soon to the date that the movers
would arrive I would drive
out with the fish to the new house, set them up
and return with friends in Colorado taking care of them until my
return. There was
a period of nearly a month that the fish were put
into groups in marked Sterilite containers with filters, etc. in
a little quarter
basement in Sacramento. When prospective buyers
wanted to see the basement we attempted to explain that knowing
it was
there was enough- there was no need to actually
take a look. There were approximately 15 10 gallon white buckets
down there
with fish in them. All of the tanks and racks,
etc. had been taken to a rented storage unit. All but the most
essential fish had been
given away, sold or culled.
I looked into renting a van, assuming I could put
everything- the broken down racks, tanks and white buckets in a
big enough van.
A trailer was out of the question- the vehicle I
used would have to have AC that would keep everything relatively
cool, and I would
have to be driving whenever the weather was warm,
eating in the van, etc. An hour with no AC in the desert heat
would certainly
cook everything, killing off any fish pretty
quickly.
It turned out that renting a van was beyond my
means as well- we could nearly have bought new racks and tanks
for the same
price of a rental van large enough. I fortunately
had a friend with a van big enough, but needed to convince him
to let me borrow
it for a week to drive across country! I agreed
to tune it up and fix it up in return for borrowing it for the
week it would take to do
this. He agreed.
I brought the van home to find that it was not in
fact big enough to hold all I had thought it would. Once the
tanks and stands were
in, with all of the peripheral equipment- lights,
pumps, heaters, etc., there was only room for three of the
buckets. So everything
would need to come back out, and I planned the
time I would have to leave. Late the night before, after it had
gotten cool I emptied
each bucket into one of the tanks- filling each
tank about 2 inches. I made sure to use clean water. The fish
had not eaten in over 24
hours. I was careful not to overcrowd any
particular tank, and accepted that because of the way they would
be stacked, I would not
be able to access many of the tanks until my
arrival. If I had to do it over again I would have sprinkled
some ammo chips in the tanks
to absorb excess ammonia- but as it turned out, I
lost very few fish.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
I left early on a Friday morning, and the
temperature in the Nevada desert by the time I entered it was
well over 100 degrees.
I was well aware that even a minor breakdown
requiring the fish to sit for more than about 20 minutes without
the AC on would
quickly overheat the van and wipe out the fish. I
found that driving from about 8 in the morning until 7 at night
kept the fish at
survivable temps. Every noise or slight variation
in the AC was cause for concern. Eating was drive through, fuel
and rest stops
were quick and without turning off the engine, if
possible.
It looked like I would arrive late morning on
Sunday. I got into the van on Sunday morning in Cheyanne,
Wyoming, and the
smell that hit me as I opened the door told me
that I had a few that weren’t going to make the rest of the trip
with everyone
else. At this point I had to laugh to myself; now
I was going to drive this odd cargo with this pungent ammonia
smell… I could
not see into most of the tanks, and a look at the
outer tanks told me that most were still OK, but somewhere
things weren’t
going well, and unfortunately, one dead fish will
cause the deaths of everyone else in the same container. I
wasn’t genuinely
concerned, as I figured that if everything had
died I could probably have smelled it in my hotel room with the
doors closed…
I pulled up to the house about 11 AM on Sunday,
1200 miles after leaving Sacramento, and quickly began to unload
the van to
assess the casualties. I had two containers that
died- 2 of the 3 buckets that did make the trip. It was probably
a good thing everything
wasn’t in buckets. One was of adult X.
Nezahualcoyotls, and the other was a container of small plecos.
They easily smelled up the
entire van- but everything else seemed fine. I
did lose a couple- 3 or 4 other fish in the acclimation process,
but I felt the move
overall was very successful.
I had brought along some closed containers of
plain water to add to their “trip water” when I arrived. This
was important.
Each tank got the equivalent of about 30% fresh
water added to their tank. Each 10 gallon tank had about 2 to 3
gallons in it.
Every hour I added about 1/2 cup of new tap water
from the new location to each tank, keeping an eye on any signs
of distress,
and proceeded to put the racks together.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Since that trip I have transported fish to and
from shows throughout the country, with fish being required to
live for up to two
weeks without routine filtration and aeration. After an
occasion where the water at a hotel room wiped out the majority
of the
fish I was carrying- and any one of many
variables could have accounted for the difference in water
quality- I now bring water
from home with me in 7 gallon containers. Since
using those and providing 30-50% water changes each evening,
feeding lightly
daily after 4-5 days, I have lost very few fish.
On a recent 2 week trip across country from Denver to Cleveland,
then New York
and back to Denver, bringing nearly 300 fish I
lost 4.
As the tanks began to fill during the acclimation
process at the new location I put them on the racks and added
box filters to
provide aeration and water movement. I quit
adding water at about 11 that night and let them adjust until
the next morning.
The next day I then went ahead and filled the
tanks up with the new water. I was careful not to move the fish
around yet, the
less manipulation of them, the better. I set
everything up, and let them run for two days- long enough to get
a batch of brine
shrimp into them, and divided them up into their
proper tanks- I had mixed some species that would not interbreed
to save
space etc.
I took my friends there in Colorado through the
steps to keep the fish going until my return, and then drove
back to California,
hoping that it would not be the last time I would
see everything alive! As it turned out, they took very good care
of the tanks,
even having to deal with one plexiglas tank that
split a seam from the stresses of the move. They cleaned
everything up and
kept on top of it all, with very few fish lost. I
have added many more tanks since and a couple more racks, and
the move has
proven to be as beneficial for the fish as I had
hoped.
________________________________________________________________________________________-
I did not do many of the things some people
recommend, but I also avoided some things that make moves
difficult. I did not
transport the fish in closed bags- the open tanks
provided lots of surface area and the sloshing around provided
lots of
aeration. Today when transporting fish to shows I
use the same open Sterilte containers, stacked inside one
another- larger
into smaller, which allows for a few inches in
each container for the fish to stay safe, comfortable and
aerated.
The fish were not fed prior to this 3 day move
and did not eat until they were safely in their new tanks with
the proper filtration.
I was with them the entire time to ensure that
the temperature did not get out of bounds, and I made a point of
not overcrowding
the containers. I did move plants with the fish,
and with some thought I should have moved the plants in their
own containers
separately. But it was not a problem this time.
The two containers I did lose had less surface area and
contained older or larger
fish that were tested by the move the most.
I would hope that I do not need to do this again
anytime soon, and can think of many other more pleasurable ways
to spend a
weekend, but it can be done, and successfully
with a little thought and preparation. Commercial suppliers ship
fish under fairly
difficult conditions routinely, and it is
important to keep in mind that shipping and moving fish is a
common procedure.
For those of us that know each fish individually
it can be just as stressful for us as it is for the fish, but do
not feel that it
cannot be done!
Greg Sage
Copyright Select Aquatics 2011
selectaquatics@gmail.com
selectaquatics.com
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