Decide early: move the fish, or defend the tank in place
Days of drilling, sanding and demolition shake a house in ways a single loud afternoon does not, so the first decision is whether the fish ride it out somewhere else. A temporary home — a food-safe storage tub or spare tank with the tank's own filter media and heater moved over, a lid on top, set up in the quietest, least dusty room — spares them the worst of both vibration and dust, and for a small tank's worth of fish it is usually a weekend's work rather than a project. Moving the whole aquarium is the other honest option only if you treat it as a full planned move: livestock out, water largely drained, substrate and decor as they are — a tank is never carried full, because the shifting weight twists seals and racks glass. What you must not do is hope a big tank will simply endure a week of hammer drilling on its own wall.
If the tank stays: seal it, cover it, calm it
For a tank that genuinely cannot move, build its defences before the first drill. A clean sheet of board cut to cover the top, under a washed sheet or dust cover, keeps falling plaster and paint dust off the surface while still letting you lift a corner for feeding. Close and, if the gap allows, tape the door of the room the tank is in, and ask the workers to keep their own cutting and sanding doors shut too — dust travels a house on air currents faster than anyone expects. Vibration is softened a little by the stand standing on a folded blanket or mat rather than bare boards. Run lights on a shorter day or leave the tank dim and covered during the loudest hours; fish in a dark, quiet box rest rather than startle at every tremor.
Dust in the water: what to do when work finishes
However good the covers, assume some dust reached the water and plan the clean-up. Skim the surface with a clean jug or paper laid briefly on the water to lift film, then do a partial water change with matched, conditioned water, siphoning the areas where dust visibly settled. Test the water afterwards — building dust can carry plaster, paint residue and worse, and a changed pH or a spike in ammonia is something you want on a test result, not discovered through the fish. Watch feeding and behaviour for several days after the work ends, keep changes gentle and staged rather than one huge corrective overhaul, and hold off adding any new fish until the tank has run clean and steady for a while.
Coordinate the humans around the fish
Repairs involve other people's schedules — the contractor deciding at breakfast that today became drilling day, the neighbour holding a spare key, the family member across town whose quiet spare room hosts the tub of fish. Keep that coordination in one place rather than scattered across texts: who is told before noisy work starts, who holds the tub's feeding duty, who gets the message if a wall comes down faster than planned. KinsLe's Messenger gathers every conversation about a pet into one per-pet communications hub, so the builder, the fish-sitter and you are reading the same thread when the plan changes at short notice — and the fish's week of upheaval stays organised instead of improvised.