Drklude

I ended up going with option 1.5 in smaller 2 gallon buckets. Had 1 loss during the trip but overall everything arrived healthy. Thanks for the suggestions!

Going to be driving from Denver, CO to Tampa, FL in a couple weeks, and need to take about a dozen grown Koi Swordtails, and about 8 grown White Clouds and about 20 White Cloud fry, roughly 1/4" long, but getting baby brine daily to bulk them up before the move. All fish will be in transit for about 3 days. Scenario #1 Bag the fish and put them in a cooler to avoid temp swings. Scenario #2 Use two 5 gallon buckets, one for white clouds and one for swordtails, each with a USB air pump. My main concern is trying to keep the 5 gallon buckets cool while traveling, I don't really have room for them within the AC of the car. They would likely be in a uhaul trailer that I would be checking on 1-2 times a day during the trip. Can't really do water changes, but could add ice during the heat of the day. If I bag the fish, I could keep them in the car, but they would have much less water overall. Thoughts, ideas, opinions...? Thanks!

@lefty oI actually reached out to them just before posting this. Ended up with some saltwater equipment that I don't need from buying tanks on Craigslist. Hoping they will trade for some store credit. Waiting to hear back.

First, yes I know I can buy it from the COOP, but I have many tanks and don't want to buy it 1 lb at a time. Cory still gets plenty of my money, don't worry. I'm looking for something I can buy in like 40lb bags. I've seen options online at Petco and other big box stores, but the bags all say "extra this" and "fortified that" so I'm a bit gun shy on putting large amounts in my aquariums. I have fairly hard water, but low PH, about 6.4ish. I'm trying to raise PH and just add some overall buffing capacity to the tanks. Any suggestions would be great! Thanks.

I always go with the smell test, no smell good to go. But if you aren't in a rush, I would give it up to a week as some folks have thicker beads of silicone than others. Never hurts to give it an extra day or two when the alternative is resealing!

Implemented a lot of these suggestions, thank you. @Sapere_Ceta that fork suggestion was a game changer!

Want to make sure I have all my bases covered. I have what looks like hair algae that is starting to cover the bottom 4 inches or so of the tank. I've had about 5 amano shrimp and 2 SAE in the tank for about 3 months now. About a month ago I stopped easy green and cut light back to about 7 hours a day. This was a bare bottom tank for a couple years before I converted it over to a planted tank about 8 months ago. Am I missing anything? I try to manually remove as much as I can when I gravel vac, but seems I can never get it all. Any suggestions/input would be great. Thanks!