Thought I'd pick all of your brains for any good suggestions or ideas to increase the success rate of transitioning out to Santa Fe.
The info and plan:
Fish,coral and rock (only some) will be in a "cooler tank" for up to 13 days...maybe as little as 6 days (depends on how fast movers are)
I'll break down my tank on a Sunday, movers pack and load on Mon/Tue and I will then drive out to SF arriving on Thursday or so.
When movers arrive at new location, I can relocate cooler occupants to 40g tank and can up the flow and water volume etc
The cooler is this guy http://www.igloo-store.com/detail/IGL+MAX+COLD+40 which I can probably fill 2/3 full on transportation and 90% full when not in the car (1-2 day drive depending on if we want to go non stop
I'll have a small 50watt stealth and a small koralia run on a 100watt car inverter.
Occupants to transport will be (1 ea) foxface, clown, tail spot blenny, royal gramma, and two shark nose gobbies. ..and a coupe hermits, snails and small abalone. Coral will be a dozen or so small frags of SPS, a dozen or so small LPS frags and a few large LPS pieces that don't to frag (like plates/brains). I'll leave the cooler as open as I can for the fish, and I'll use frag racks glued in place to hold the coral.
THis is pretty full here, so I won't have room for much rock. I was thinking of using either 1-2 ~6" live rocks from my tank, or start a foam filter/airstone, or start up some seachem DeNitrate (high porocity media) and let it culture in my tank for a few weeks prior and then put down a thin layer of it in the bottom of the cooler.
I'll also bring with me 2g of RO/DI and 2g of 35ppt salt water.
Note: the 40g tank is also going to be temp...after my new tank is setup and rock cycles, all will be transferred on over.
Appreciate any advice :-D