Just for reference, I moved my 75g SPS tank twice by draining it, carrying it to the van with all the rock, corals and fish in the tank. Total empty time about 1 hour. Draining it for 15 minutes in place is a breeze.

Back when I was trying to catch a longnose butterfly that developed a taste for polyps in my 90g SPS tank I used a bunch of peices of glass to cover up all but one of his escape routes. Then that night when he was sleeping I put a few more peices in behind his fav escape route that funneled into a small clear jug. The next morning when the lights came on for feeding all I had to do was stick the net in my tank and he took off to his fav hiding place full speed which made him bulldose into the jug. Then I just put my net over it and pulled the jug out.
0 corals damaged...

Hey Guys,

Just want to give an update, a friend and I started to drain the tank yesterday at 10am and hand caught the fish out. It was by far the easiest catch EVER!!

By 10:30 water was starting to fill back in and everything is doing well, I am really happy I decided to do it this way and thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions.

good to hear it all worked out for ya and you got him out:biggrin:

Yes he is doing alot better in the new 180g home, I went to visit him and he was swimming very normal. It was abit crammed in my 75g so I am glad he went to a bigger home!

That's great news! I need to source 400g worth of containers in case I want my new damsels out haha.

Heh, when I drained my 175g I had on hand 5 30g tubs and a 20g tub.......much to my disgust I only needed the 5 30g tubs and even then the last tub wasn't completely full.......these tanks don't hold as much water as they say they do

Marie has a good point, when I drained my 75g I only used 1 garbage can and a rectangle bin for some corals, I was quite surprised how little it took to drain the tank almost empty!

It was probally the 60lbs of rock that displaced alot of the water....