Moving house with Goldfish?

[DialsMavis]

We ae moving a 100 miles in a few weeks, how on earth do I move our 2 goldfish? please can anyone advise?

not sure whether this can be done but I'd 'bag them' separately in water from their own tank.

Or if you were moving a large aquarium style tank then I'd empty out about 2/3 of the water and seal the thing as best you could.

But if doing the aquarium thingy, then I'd be inclined to bag them aswell and sit them in the 1/3 of water....

Does that make sense?

Am I being cruel to bag them - I know it's been banned at the fair, but I don't see any other way tbh.

When I was a kid we moved about 200 miles and the goldfish (Copper) came with us in a plastic bag of water, moved between my lap and my mum's.

He survived ? he lived for years actually. He started out as a tank fish and then when we moved and had a pond in the garden he moved into that and grew HUGE. But, thinking about it, I won him at a fair (yes, he was in a plastic bag when I won him) so maybe he was for some reason very good at adapting to weird and different environments.

Yes, you'll need to bag the fish or put them in a large storage box with a lid (Staples do a food grade plastic one here ). You'll need one for the fish and one for the filter.

You'll also need a couple of battery powered air pumps as well. It's important that the filter media (sponges or rings or whatever's in there) is kept aerated to prevent too much of the good bacteria dying off. See here for more info.

You should also try and save some of the water and do the move as quickly as you can.

I can do a step-by-step guide later if you like but I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment.

Thanks for all your replies, a step by step would be great. I would be tempted to rehome the fishies with a friend and replace but DS would be very upset (even though I end up feeding them and doing all tank maintenence).

Cripes, EauRouge makes me feel a bit inadequate
But what can I say; Copper survived the move in a plastic bag with no air pump or anything.

Right, the DDs are asleep so I've got a spare moment. Hope this helps.

You will need-

-A storage box with a lid (the 64 litre one should be fine for 2 fully grown goldies) or 2 very large fish bags which you can buy in aquatic stores. If you are bagging then make sure to get a couple of spares and double bag just in case. I would go with the storage box though since it's a long journey.

-A container for the filter media. Something tall and thin like a flask would probably work best for this.

-Two battery powered air pumps and air stones.

-A bottle of Ammolock or similar

-Water test kit

-Big container(s) for aquarium water. Most aquatic stores sell 5 gallon bottles for RO water or you could try a shop that sells wine making equipment.

1. Start draining the tank, saving as much water as you can. The tap water where you are moving to might have different pH and pH fluctuations are bad news for fish so the more water you can save, the better.

1. Take anything out of the tank that might injure the fish when you are trying to catch them.

1. Catch the fish and transfer them to the storage box. Put in the air stone from the battery powered pump and switch it on. Drop in a couple of drops of ammolock, the bottle should tell you how much to put it.

1. Turn off the filter and take the media out. Fill up the flask with water, put the air stone in the bottom and put the filter media (sponges or hoops or whatever you've got) on top. Switch the air pump on, making sure the air is flowing through the filter media. This will help to keep the good bacteria alive.

1. Drive 100 miles.

1. Set up the tank in your new place, chuck in all the old water and get the filter up and running ASAP. Then switch some of the water between the storage box and the tank to even out the temperature. Once the temp is about the same then you can release the fish back into the tank.

1. Don't feed them for the first day and feed very sparingly for the first week.

1. Keep a really close eye on the ammonia level and nitrIte level for the first few weeks. I would expect a small ammonia spike but you can use the Ammolock and do some extra water changes to keep the level down. If you do use Ammolock then it will bugger up the test readings so don't worry too much if the ammonia level seems to be high enough to kill your fish.

Try and do this all as quickly as you can, the sooner you can get the filter up and running again, the more good bacteria you will save.

Moving fish can be done just by putting them in bags but the more care you take then the more chance your fish have of surviving the journey. I really would take care with the filter though, it would suck to transfer the fish all that way and then have them die because of new tank syndrome.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit, let me know if you need anything clarifying, I'm a bit tired so I might have slipped some fish geek aquarist jargon in there.

Thank you so much! I will read in depth nearer the time...

Oh I forgot to say about the filter media, make sure you use water from the tank and never from the tap. Keep it wet, keep it aerated and never, ever feed it after midnight and it should be OK.