Many people are attracted to the bright, lush green colors of live plants.  Rightly so; planted aquariums are beautiful and natural looking.  In addition, most fish are healtier in aquariums with live plants.  Fake plants can actually damage fish, because they have sharp edges. 

When a novice gets plants, they almost always make one predictable mistake; they buy a new, higher wattage aquarium light to give their new plants a great start with lots of light, great right?  Actually its a big mistake.  Unless you are going to add a pressurized CO2 system and keep high difficulty, high light plants, you actually will kill your plants with high light.

Plants can only photosynthesize as fast as they can take up CO2; blasting plants with too much light makes the plant consume all available CO2, and then they run out, and algae start growing on the plants, which kills them, and having no CO2 for a large part of the day is not good for plants either.  Basically your plants need an amount of light which is in line with the available amount of CO2, so that they have some CO2 all day long.  In the case of most low light/easy plants that the beginner will attempt (crypts, anubias, java fern, etc) the plants will actually thrive far better under the standard low wattage flourescent lights that come with most aquarium kits.  Most people simply think that more light = healthier plants (an intuitive thought), and I run into a lot of people who are frustrated with their planted aquarium because they purchased an expensive, higher wattage lighting system to 'help' their plants, and are completely unable to keep even the easiest of plants, because they are actually killing their plants with light!  

A large number of my clients tanks are low light, low tech planted tanks.  It keeps the fish healthy, and because the wattage over the tank is kept low, the plants thrive, as long as I select the proper plants and follow a few rules.  A pleasing aquascape can be made using only three or four types of plants; crypt's, java fern, anubias, and moss.  There are many types of each of these families of plants, so a varied and interesting low tech tank is easy to create if these easy plants are used under low wattage of the proper spectrum; 5000-9000 kelvin bulbs (daylight bulbs).  That in conjuction with a plant gravel such as seachem flourite, a root tab fertilizer, and a moderate amount of liquid fertilizer, will result in a supremely easy to keep planted aquarium with healthy plants, and healthy fish.

Here is a poor pic of a very nice tank of one of my customers which uses just that formula.

There are a few other things which help in a low tech tank such as this one; first, don't use an air pump.  Air pumps and air stones will force most of the CO2 out of the water before your plants can use it.  Second, don't disturb the water surface too much; use a canister filter and direct the output downwards(under water).  Disturbing the surface of the water will again displace much of the CO2 which the plants need to thrive.  Finally, have a good sized fish population, the fish are the ones making the CO2 in the first place.

Ever had to move an aquarium!?  Its about the most time consuming thing you can do on moving day.  Generally, to move an aquarium without killing anything can take anywhere from 6 to 18 hours depending on the size of the aquarium and the distance between the old and new location.

The basic idea behind all of my tips will be to minimize the amount of time that the fish are without filtration, aeration and temperature control.

Here are some tips:

1.  Move the aquarium on a different day as the rest of your belongings, if at all possible.  Otherwise, you will simply not have time to do it.

2.  Pack up non-essential items first, such as fish food, lighting, accessories.  Basically get everything out of the stand and off the tank EXCEPT for the filter and heater.  Leave these for last.

3.  Stop feeding the fish 72hrs prior to moving them.  Fasted fish will produce far less waste.  Also, clean the tank and filter approximately 10 days before the move and feed much less after this time.  This will allow for the filter to be relatively clean inside and the water to be pristine.

4.  When you are ready to move, put as much of the aquarium water as possible in camping jugs or buckets with lids.  Put the media from the filter inside a bucket of water, preferably with air from a portable air pump (battery operated).  Put fish in a bucket with a lid as well, also aerated if possible.  Gravel wash the gravel and throw away the dirty water, but again try to preserve and move as much as possible.  Keep the gravel in a bucket of water as well (or buckets).  Keeping the gravel and filter media in aerated water will go a long way to keeping your biological filter alive.

5.  Transport all gear and fish in a temperature controlled vehicle @ ~75F-80F (for tropicals).  Colder for goldfish.

6.  When you arrive, your first task should be a partial water change on the buckets with animals in them.  Remove half the water from those buckets, and replace with fresh water (or freshly mixed saltwater, if this is marine - much more difficult because you need to have pre-mixed a water change before hand at the last location).  This will keep your fish alive for tip 7.

7.  Put the tank on the stand, empty the camping jugs full of water into the tank.  Now fill the tank with enough new water to start the filter - make sure it is near the right temperature.  Put media back in filter and start it ASAP.  Put the gravel back in.  Put the heater back in, and put the fish back in.  This step should be your absolute priority; dont worry about accessories, just get the filter and heater running on the tank and get the fish back in the tank as quickly as possible.

8.  Don't feed your fish for 3 or 4 days after getting it set back up; this will allow the bio filter to re-establish itself.

Thats it!  I've moved many aquariums and never had a problem with following this method.

Chris