Well… we finally got it done. The old aquarium stand is gone, and the new stand, freshly painted, has taken its place. As you might guess, this took a little doing. I’ll walk you through the process in this post.

Aquarium on New Stand

A 50 gallon aquarium is about 600 pounds when it’s full of water.  As a result, I had to get almost all the water out before we attempted to move it.  We had already purchased six 5-gallon plastic buckets, two of which I use often when changing water.  But that’s only 30 gallons.  So I also used a 20-gallon aquarium I bought on Craig’s list a few months ago.  You’ll hear more about my plans for that aquarium in the coming months.

Water Buckets

Along with the water, the fish and most of the live rock went into the buckets.  I wanted to keep the coral and other organism’s on the rocks as comfortable as possible.  The complete move only took about 3 hours.  But when I started I didn’t know how long it would take and didn’t want to take chances.

As the water was draining I took the opportunity to give the inside of the aquarium a good scrubbing.  I scraped off the Coralline algae from the front and sides of the aquarium, especially where I can’t get to it normally.  I used a plastic dish scrubber (which has never been in dish water) to scrape with.  Be careful scraping if you have an acrylic aquarium.

Heavy Aquarium (NOT...)

Once all the water was out of the aquarium and all the lighting and filtration system was removed, we picked up the aquarium and put it on the floor.  We then swapped the two aquarium stands, and replaced the aquarium.  Then, it was time to replace all the water, live rock, and fish.  The filtration system and lighting were next.  I filled the tiny bit of water that was missing with RO-DI water. I chose not to do a water change, simply to reduce the already traumatic day for the aquarium inhabitants.

Unfortunately, one of the Black Percula Clownfish didn’t make it.  But, a couple of days later, all the coral and invertebrates are doing well.  I checked the chemical levels the day after the swap, and everything looked good.  Although I regret the one loss, I believe the aquarium stand swap was a success.