Moving Long Distance. Tips and ideas, please.

[CalmedByFish]

I just found out I'll be moving to a place that's a 16 hour drive from my current home. Because I also have a young child to travel with, my water critters will likely be in their travel containers for ~4 days. (And yes, that does seem safer to me than mailing them does. Temperature on their route would be an issue.)

I'll surely have more questions later, but what are your initial thoughts on how best to take care of them over a 3 day drive? 

I have one nano USB air pump with the weighted air stone. I can buy one of those rechargeable battery(?) packs that comes with it. I figure on giving each container of water several hours of air stone per day. I can let a Purigen bag sit in the bottom of each to help absorb ammonia, and fast them for a day beforehand. I can also either let a thermometer float in each container, or have one on hand to do temp checks.

I'll have at least 3 containers: 1 angel, boy endlers, and girl endlers. I'll likely also have a separate container for snails, though my favorites could go in the previous 3 containers so I'm keeping a closer eye on their water. To keep some bacteria alive, I could at least add seasoned gravel to the bottom of every container. (There will also be some bacteria on aquairum plants I'm taking.)

One of my biggest questions: What about my 1 African Dwarf Frog? She'll be 7.5 years old at the time. 

All thoughts welcome. I need to get my plan rolling. 

[Fish Folk]

This is only a partial reply... but you might look into a power converter from your cigarette lighter to normal plug for the drive (ca. $15). This would allow you to run heat and air in moving containers.

[anewbie]

I dealt with this when i moved from north east to southeast - though my trip only took 2 full days. What I did is I purchased a small 25 watt heater and the largest tub thingy that would fit in my car firmly on the floor behind the back seat  - it wasn't very large maybe 25 or 35 gallons - and it was inexpensive - less than $10 from target. I also purchased one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FYJVFNK/ and ran it off the cig lighter. I used it to power the heater and small air pump - i sealed the lid but put holes in the lid so the fish couldn't jump out but had fresh air (the air pump helped). 

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In the evening i had to siphon some water out of the container to lift it out of the car (I only had it about 1/2 full but that is still over 150lbs) - i used a pair of 5 gallon pails. I took it into the hotel room and plugged everything in. 

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All the fishes i had at the time made it - a few kuhli loaches; sword tails; guppies; 8 cardinal tetra; bn pleco and something else i don't remember. 

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Not delicate fishes but whatever. Do not feed the fishes while traveling. 

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I do not know anything about ADF; the angel if an adult will be the biggest problem because it needs some water depth and adequate air - sticking it in a pail without some source of air will likely be a problem resulting in a dead fish - the endlers will be hard to kill unless they are allowed to bake in the sun. 

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For bacteria - i just put the unopened full canister filter in the car - and it seemed to do fine with the 2 days of not running. If you have sponge filters you can run those off the air pump as long as they fit in your containers.

[Fish Folk]

This is great from @anewbie — my thoughts almost exactly. I would suggest 5-gal pails, a medium sponge filter in each powered by car converter, or battery powered air pump. Heat could be a small 25 watt like described above, or the cheap “hold it steady” 60 watt heaters that come with small aquarium kits.

Maybe do one pail for Angel, one pail for female endlers, one for male endlers, and one for tons of substrate + snails. Add extra aeration for the snails + substrate because aerobic bacteria needs air to thrive.

Your greatest limitation will be space for travel, and what you may have to set up upon arrival.

[CalmedByFish]

Everyone, thank you. You've given me good ideas. 

For whoever searches the forum for this topic later, I'm adding an ACO video I found.

 

[NanoNano]

It's moving season, so there's been a lot of posts and advice given on r/Aquariums on Reddit as well.  I'd definitely look at threads/advice over there too.