High Tide Aquatics

Can fish and coral survive overnight in a brute trash can

In anticipation for my tank move, I’m planning for a worst case scenario where I have to take more than a day.

If I leave some rock in the brute, can I house a yellow tang, and two wrasses in there overnight? It’d in about 15G or water

also, any chance I could store coral in there as well, or leave them in a 5G bucket overnight
 
In anticipation for my tank move, I’m planning for a worst case scenario where I have to take more than a day.

If I leave some rock in the brute, can I house a yellow tang, and two wrasses in there overnight? It’d in about 15G or water

also, any chance I could store coral in there as well, or leave them in a 5G bucket overnight
I would say if water condition is clean, thw contain is cleaned before filled, yes.
Ciral and fish survive shipping in small bags for couple days..
The trick is thw watwr quality thu. Fill before you still things in your rank so you take out clean stable parameters water..
 
Follow up Q...should I use old tank water or freshly mixed
Definitely tank water.
Also have some ziplock bags or tightly sealed bags fill them with fresh salt water and freez them.
When you do the transfer, if heat became an issue you can float these ziplock bags in the container and cool down the water..
 
If you have the option, setting up a new tank on location even a couple days in advance (obviously not new dry rock) will help. Run a foam filter in the old system for a couple weeks, then swap it to the holding system. It has one tall baffle dividing it but I have a 75 you can borrow for a couple weeks, or a 50 (not a 55) if that's better.

Supposing you do opt to stick with the trash can, under normal circumstances yes, they will survive. I've done 24 hours in bags driving across the country.
As with reefing, this is going to be about keeping water.
The primary concern is temperature.
The secondary concern at that long a time period is waste buildup.
Normally I consider aeration/water movement to be secondary, but I'm going to call it a close third in this case.

Temperature is easy, assuming it doesn't get too hot. Use a heater. Of all the emergencies I've seen start while doing tank moves letting the fish get cold in buckets is the number one problem.

Waste management is going to be a bit of a concern. Even with you not feeding for 24 hours in advance the fish are going to get nervous and make a mess of their water. I would use tank water so long as you can, but plan to change the water after the first (making a guess here) 6-12 hours, aka at the end of the first day. My relative who ships fish (freshwater) moves livestock from its home to a temporary holding tank the evening before he ships. He says this greatly improves the survival rate as the fish quickly soil the first place he moves them to, but don't have much left in them to foul up the shipping bags. I've seen the same on one of my moves. I bungled a departure and had to delay 24 hours after I tore down a system. After 1 day I re-bagged the fish. The water from the first 24 hours was disgusting. The fish ended up bagged for almost 30 hours on the second bagging, but the water at the end looked much better.

Put the coral in different containers than the fish. It may slime quite a bit, which will not help the water quality any. No sense having two sources of slightly incompatible waste in the same container.

Battery powered air pumps work, but so does an inverter, a normal air pump, and some splitters. The latter is likely more effective if you have lots of containers in transport. If most of the time stopped is at either end where there is power then the inverter isn't needed.

If you have sand pull it out, and don't put it back in until it's been rinsed, which will be after the fish and coral are back in. Do not rely on doing a drain, move, refill without disturbing it and DO NOT scoop it out and dump it back in without a rinse.
 
Thanks for the super thorough response!
I’m tearing down my nuvo 40 and setting up a reefer250 in the exact same spot, so it’s going to be impossible for me to have the new tank up and running in advance.

it’s also going to be impossible for me to have 65G of water on hand warmed up to 80 degrees, so I think it’s likely I’m going to have to have to use a temporary holding tank while the 250 comes up to temp.

My plan was to just fill the tank with 0 TDS RO water from the local water store and then mix up the salt in the display tank and heat up. I anticipate having about 4 hours of time to heat up the tank before I can’t dedicate any more time since the nanny will be leaving at 4pm that day.

I’m going to have 3 heaters in the tank though to try and speed up the heating process, and then I’ll move over my old and new rock
 
Just a 40 gallon and in the same room? Easy! Drain all but the last 4" of water, get two able bodied people to slide the tank sideways 4 feet, plug it back in, put the water back in, set the new one up, and then move your livestock and rocks across. If you can catch the fish before moving the Nuvo then drain to the sandbed instead of leaving 4" of water. The coral will be out of water less than 5 minutes and will be fine. There is zero reason to be leaving anything in a bucket of water overnight. It's a lot easier if the 40 can stay on its stand while the new tank goes up, but moving a tank that small to a different stand isn't awful if you're careful (how you pick up and set down is critical).

Admittedly it was only around a quarter mile, but last time I had to move a 29 gallon biocube to a different address I didn't even take the coral or RBTAs out. We caught the fish, drained the water to the sandbed, put cardboard (wrapped in trash bags to keep it dry) in to prevent a rock shift from scratching the three viewing sides, tilted it back a couple degrees, drove, put the water back in, plugged everything back in, and re-introduced the fish that had been waiting in a 5 gallon bucket. Nems even looked fine an hour later. No, there were no hills involved.
 
For what it's worth, i sometimes do tank transfer QT where i keep fish in alternating buckets (home depot hdx bins), switching everyday with nothing but a powerhead and a heater for 28 days with no problems. I use fresh SW daily so no ammonia spikes beyond what the fish can handle. If you have LR, you'll be even more fine
 
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