Okay, on Monday I make the great journey back to college. I have bags and I have tupperware boxes (they're about the size of a shoebox). Which way do you think would be less stressful to move my betta, cories, and shrimp? Betta in a double bag in a box with one of those little hand heater things and everybody else in a tupperware? Betta in a tupperware and everybody else in a tupperware? With heat packs on the tupperwares?
Secondly, I've brought in about 5 gallons of water from my home so far, should I bring more? When I do water changes, should I do half home water and half college water for the first week?
IMO since you are moving, I would consider bottled water, spring preferrably.. and stick to a brand. Bringing water from home is great but if you will not be able to make a consistent water change with that particular water then I would go the bottled. I would wait for someone else to chime in though with more experience.
There are lots of different ways to transport the fish. I'm actually halfway through a cross country move myself... there are no casualties yet :D We'll see how they fair the rest of the way. What I did was get tons of little plastic reptile cups from Petsmart (my Petsmart employee gave them to me under the radar lol), and I put them in that and those in my 10 gallon aquarium. I filled the aquarium only enough to cover the heater and made sure all the plastic cups were full enough to stay put in the water. Then I got a power converter to plug the heater in to my car.
They are doing well, very little color loss. I've been driving mostly on hwy and therefore they haven't bumped around much.
I didn't do the bag thing cuz my trip is going to be a 20+ hr trip total and the bags I had weren't breathable. So they only held air for an hour or so... and I didn't have time to stop all along the way, especially with a 4 month old baby!
Bettas travel real well, so take extra care and they'll be just fine!
I can't afford that much spring water, unfortunately, so I was hoping to slowly acclimate my fish to the different type of water by doing dilutions with my home water. I just am not sure how slowly to go and how much water I'll need to bring.
That is a really good idea, putting the fish in cups in water in the tank. My only worry is that the bumping (blah, back roads in winter) will knock their cups over. I might just do that, though, if I don't hear anything else.
And my betta will be studying fishics ( hehe, Bad Puns!).
Maybe you can clean some rocks or some other weight to drop in the cups for added stability. The water in my cups was high enough to offset the bouyancy issue lol.
Just carry some of your water from home with you and acclimatize them. It'll take only a few hours :). Once you're at your dorm, get a jug of water from the campus, and slowly add a bit to their tubberwares or cups or whatever. Wait 15 or so minutes, pour out a little bit, and add a little more campus water. Keep doing this until you're pretty sure they're in 100% college campus water. During the acclimitation process, keep an eye on them for stress. oh, and make sure while acclimatizing they're definately floating in a heated tank (with college water) so they'll stay warm and you can add them directly in once acclimatized.
So I don't need jugs of water from home? Just fill 'er up with college water and then acclimatize them the same way I did when I first brought them home? There won't be any pH shock or anything? It is chlorinated, hard, and I think more basic, which is what had me worried.
Well, if you want to do water changes on the road, yeah, you could bring a jug of your water, but IMO, you won't need it. Bettas get shipped from halfway across the world from thailand to people all over the world very frequently, and most are fine so long as they are properly acclimatized. So you don't need to worry if you take enough time to acclimatize them. As for the chlorine, you've got a water conditioner, right, so you don't have to worry about that.
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