Posting hasn’t been on my mind lately. Escrow closed on the new home about a month ago, but I’m still not in the new home yet. I knew it would take some time, even just to move the fish tanks, even though the new home is only fifteen minutes away.

This was the 20 gallon before moving. I drained it, leaving a couple inches of water above the substrate and carried it like that. The move went well, although the plants are flattened out quite a bit, and they still haven’t popped up since. I may have to go in and do some pruning.

The 100 gallon goldfish barrel was drained down as far as the siphon would allow. The goldfish were put temporarily into a bucket, and the whole thing was hauled to the new house. Let me tell you something. Even with regular gravel vacuuming of this barrel, the bottom of the barrel smelled horrible without the water layer to hold the smell down. Fortunately the smell didn’t bother the fish, and they are all doing fine.

This was the dreaded monster. 55 gallons of tank with lots of small fish that are damn near impossible to catch. After pulling the plants, wrangling up the fish, I drained the tank as far as I could and hauled it up to the new home.

To make matters worse, the gas at the new home was turned off earlier that day due to some gas leaks the inspectors found, so we weren’t able to get hot water out of the faucets. We took 5 gallons of really hot water from the old home in an Arrowhead to temper the water up after filling it up most of the way.

The sink I have in the bathroom closest to the tank has a faucet that is not Python adaptable, so I was using the old fashioned bucket method to fill the tank. After two buckets it was brought to my attention that the house had a water softener hooked up to the plumbing. I hesitated for a moment and felt an impending sense of doom. Then I realized I had used the same water to fill up my 20 gallon a week ago with everything doing fine, and decided to just keep chugging a long and hope for the best.

Even with the hot water from the Arrowhead bottle, it was taking a long time to get the water up to temperature. After a while the buckets were just as cold as the tank, so I let the fish back into the tank. They weren’t looking so great. My Panda Cories, Harlequin Rasboras, SAE, and my Gouramis were pale. I tossed all my plants into the tank, leaving them floating on the top like mixed salad. I was beat after moving the tank so I left it and hoped I wouldn’t come back to a tank full of dead fish.

Today marks just over a week since the move. I stopped into the house to do my feeding and when I reached in to pull out some plants that came uprooted I noticed the water was cold. A quick addition of a thermometer showed a temperature of 60F. My heater had busted at some point. I had no idea how long ago that was since I hadn’t stopped in for a couple days. Some of my Harlequin Rasboras were looking pale again, like when I originally moved them. A quick run to the store allowed me to get two heaters running, and I left with the tank approaching 70F. Hopefully this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Quite a few of the plants didn’t make the rough transport and the cold, so I’m going to have to get a few more pieces here and there to fill in the holes in the tank. Most of the fish seem to be doing fine right now, so I can only hope for the best.

I hated moving in college, when everything fit into one car, but moving fish tanks is so much worse.