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CiXeL

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my attempt was to move my 60 gallon reef tank from manhattan beach, ca to homestead, fl. it was four years old. the drive was to be 10 east, 75 south, turnpike south.

fish made it as far as new mexico
corals made it as far as van horn, texas

perhaps the powerhead was faulty i dont know what it was but it popped the fuse on the powerports and then i couldnt power anything for a long time so everything rapidly broke down. i used the 5 gal bucket i had full of saltwater for a emergency partial water change. i was in the middle of BFE without access to any source of saltwater. in the morning the stench was terrible so we drained the cooler and dumped the corals. fortunately we were able to get our turtle and all my plants through the checkpoint at van horn without issue.

i guess ill just have to start anew out here. it will give me time to invest in better equipment and start from scratch. still it sucks losing four years worth of growth. what really pisses me off is how my girlfriend named all the damn fish so you feel three times as bad when you lose em.

how it started: manhattan beach, ca
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how it ended: van horn, tx
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some of you may well say i was stupid for attempting such an effort and have only myself to blame. thats probably true. at least i have some consolation in the fact that 98% of my corals were grown from frags so its not as if i raped a reef and killed it all. i also had few fish. unfortunately both the fish and coral in my icon were DOA.

as there arent very many people into the reef hobby in florida from what ive heard so far because people here pretty much have access to the greatest aquarium in the world an hour south of here i intend to save up some money and fly out for dave's frag swap in southern california again and bring back some frags when the time is right again.

i imagine there will be people out there who will see this and flame me for killing the animals, kicking me while im down. please don't. i feel like crap enough already.
 

Unarce

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Sorry to hear that. At least you tried. You couldn't have foreseen the equipment failure.

Hope you enjoy getting your new set-up! :D
 
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Anonymous

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ouch. I'll hook you up with some frags when you get up and running again.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

B
 
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Anonymous

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I wouldnt think of it as being a fault..I completely understand...I too would want to keep my 4yrs of work with me..Since we all arent made of money to have things or an entire tank shipped, you made the best of situation..Sorry to hear of your loss..Good luck in the future and keep us posted.
 
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Anonymous

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Sorry to hear that.

This is why I always try to discourage people from doing such a risky move.
 

Oceans Ferevh

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You did the best you could; it's hard to let go of so much effort. Don't hit yourself in the head or let anyone give you flack for the loss.
 

dubbin1

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Big time bummer but dude why didnt you bring along extra equipment for an emergency like you had? I still feel for ya though.
 

Chemical_Whore

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Yes I was wondering if it was, due to my travel schedual I am always on the road, and was planning to be driving all kinds of goodies 6 to 8 hours to my home

I have two plugs in my car, and was hopping a power head and a heater
 

CiXeL

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"Were you using a DC/AC inverter to power the pump(s)? Not sure what you meant by "powerports"..."

yes. a DC/AC inverter. im not sure what caused the fuse to pop but i searched out a local radio shack in the boonies and attempted to get another one thinking it was the inverter's problem but turned out not to be.

"Big time bummer but dude why didnt you bring along extra equipment for an emergency like you had?"

i still cant find the problem in my car's power system. we dont know where the fuses are for the power ports. we tried to plug it into the lighter jack (apparently theres 2 separate fuses for the 2 ports which have differing amounts of power ability) but when we tried to plug the dc/ac inverter into the lighter jack it would go on for a few seconds and then off and then on and then off and seemed really shaky. plus we didnt want to do something to potentially break down our car during a cross country trip.

"what size was the heater? i bet it was too big for the inverter."

the heater was 50 watts. the powerhead was 7 watts and the airpump w/tube and airstone was like 3 watts. thats still wayyy below the 140 watts they said the device could power.

if anyone else ever tries this i can only recommend one thing to them. put the stuff in a cooler, dont worry about powering anything but bring one 5 gal jug of water for each day of the trip and get a cooler with a cap you can remove at the bottom. put eggcrate in the cooler and rest all the corals on top and hope they dont bump into each other and each day do a 5 gal water change with the jugs you have. thats about the only way i could think that a trip of this magnitude could be done.

towards the end i was putting amquel in the water in a desperate attempt to stave off the ridiculous levels of ammonia being generated. i was able to do a partial water change with some extra water i had in the bucket for that purpose. i believe the individual tupperwares staved off the rot somewhat because it would take awhile for the soured water in the cooler to make its way into the individual containers.

i must say its amazing how disgusting it got. at one point i opened the lid and almost threw up on myself. we were lugging this giant cooler which had to be easily over 100 lbs into hotels and keeping it plugged in overnight. its a shame i went through so much effort and it still didnt make it. the worst feeling was being out in the middle of the west texas desert with no pet stores or sources of saltwater around for a trillion miles and watching my corals rot.
 

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