Well, it is almost complete. The fish have almost all arrived, and the tanks are more or less set up.

Those of you that know us well, have no doubt met or at least heard tales of our beloved little pets. Making a move “with fish” has been a strange experience. But as with anything that you love, and feel you have some responsibility to care for, it becomes a process that must be endured.

We are now approaching the end stage of that process. Both of the NY tanks are set up (more or less). There’s still some arranging of the cables to tidy things up, but otherwise they’re set. There is also one more shipment of some salt-water fish remaining. But their tank ready and has about half of its denizens (and all of its rock).

This requires several things... One is having fish tanks in two locations since the process of physically moving everything at once was orders of magnitude beyond what was possible. That also requires someone to care for the fish in the other location. In short, we moved our smaller tanks that were empty and then set them up once we got to NY. I was surprised, but just by keeping some of the rocks and wood from the old tanks, even after a week of being “dry” was still able to quickly “cycle” the tank with bacteria. For the salt-water tank we just purchased a bag of sand and 5kg of live rock locally.

Once we were satisfied things were stable here, we had out contact in IL begin shipping the fish. This also is no easy task. But he is well compensated. The fish are feed little to no food for a few days prior to shipping, then caught and bagged. The bags are filled with O2, the temperature lowered just a little, and packed in styrofoam containers. Less than a day later they arrive after a short plane trip and some waiting. I’ve been rather surprised by how well this has worked (even for some fish I feared would not make such an ordeal easily).

I suppose it really isn’t that far fetched. It’s a similar process by which fish are distributed to aquarium stores. Probably the hardest part is finding a person that is legally allowed to ship cargo with oxygen.

Another aspect that was surprising was the cost. While it’s not cheap or inexpensive, it has been much less than just buying things here. This is particularly true for the salt-water rock. Comparing what we could sell it for in one place and then buy replacement rock here was much more expensive than shipping it.

Having a little “capital” to spend on this was also key. While we do get some of the money back from selling things in one location, it has been necessary to absorb a significant cost, only some of it which will come back to us. It could be possible to recoup a little more, but we’re just not able to do that ourselves right now. And again, having pets requires expenditures other than just food. Chalk this up to “vet bills” or something similar.

We are down to 2 large tanks (which is more than plenty). 1 for our loaches and 1 for our salt-water fish.

Anyhow, the process continues, but is almost done. I should post pictures before too long.