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What to do when going on holiday

dIggO

dIggO

Member
Joined
30 Nov 2023
Messages
64
Location
Netherlands
Hi,
As the title says: I'm going on holiday for 2 weeks. There is someone at home to feed the fish, but knows absolutely nothing about aquariums.
It is a high-tech tank. I always have to prune something every week. Since I'm going to skip maintenance and pruning, I wonder if I can reduce the light intensity say from 60% to 40%. Also no ferts are given during those 2 weeks!

Wil it be a nightmare when I come back? Should I take another route?

Thanks for any advise in advance!
 
In regards to food, if for example I'm going for a week, I'll ask neighbour to feed roughly halfway through my trip, and I'll have the food in the proper amount in a little tub, away from the actual fish food containers so they just chuck the tub I've left out in and don't portion anything themselves. Another route is to just leave lighting & CO2 as is if it's working well, you'll just need to trim when you return which you would do either way by the sounds of it. Depending on types of plants you could throw some root tabs in, ask the person who is feeding to fertilise the tank (again, take any calculations out of their hands and have it ready to be thrown in for them), or go without.
 
FrozenShivers said:
In regards to food, if for example I'm going for a week, I'll ask neighbour to feed roughly halfway through my trip, and I'll have the food in the proper amount in a little tub, away from the actual fish food containers so they just chuck the tub I've left out in and don't portion anything themselves. Another route is to just leave lighting & CO2 as is if it's working well, you'll just need to trim when you return which you would do either way by the sounds of it. Depending on types of plants you could throw some root tabs in, ask the person who is feeding to fertilise the tank (again, take any calculations out of their hands and have it ready to be thrown in for them), or go without.
Click to expand...
I agree with this approach too. Prepare everything, so that anyone can just "do as instructed as the right tine". Like feeding, or dosing etc. In short, set them up for success and simplicity! 😀
 
Agree with if asking a non aquarist to feed put the food ,assuming flake or granule type in a sachet or small container withe the day written on,.Hide or remove any food tubs,as a non aquarist will likely think they have underfed ( we've all been there) CO2 switch off till your return would be my way, non worth any risk to livestock for sake of 2 weeks
 
Well, the person feeding the tank is instructed. I don't want to bother him with the ferts for the plants as wel as I don't want to come back and see I have a new Jungle tank where the flow is obstructed by the extensive plant growth.

CO2 is controlled via PH metering. So I can ask what the PH is before and during light hours to give me an indication of what's going on.
 
I will not trust anyone to feed my fish, not even my wife when I go away for trip. Except for small fry, fish can be fast for up to a month with no long term harm. Brooding MBUNA female and male pleco guard their eggs and hatchlings from 2 to 4 weeks without feeding. The number one killer of fish on vacation is water pollution due to over feeding by novice and rarely from starving. Fasting fish will even improve water quality by zero feeding, and ensure dead fish quickly consumed to prevent pollution. The one thing I always do before vacation is to top tank water to compensate for evaporation loss as some filters will stop working or restarting in power surge. I also do water change and filter cleaning to optimize water quality so as to prevent anaerobic degradation due to shot term power outage in my absence.
 
The one feeding is not a m0r0n. He understands...
 
I have a DIY auto feeder for small fry as illustrated in the attached pics. Each weekend food block lasts 3 to 4 days, so by stacking several blocks up in a floater and release one at a time, I can extend food availability for up to 2 weeks. I don’t feed adult fish, only small fry less than 1 cm as they don’t have enough body reserve to withstand fasting for a few days.
 

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Before I built my PLC fish tank controller, that has a "holiday mode" I fed/fertilised manually.
How to use a PLC to control your fish tank.

Before going away I bought a large number of 15ml plastic bottles. www.ampulla.co.uk

I labelled them Mon, Tues, Wed.... and placed a small portion of food in the relevant day, other bottles 10ml of macro and further bottle with 10ml of micro fertiliser,

All the tank maintainer had to do was empty the relevant days bottle into the tank job done.

With the PLC controller, I just topped up the food, macro, micro, made sure CO2 was plenty full and flipped the PLC to "holiday mode". It ran for 5 weeks before I got back to maintaining the tank. All the fish were alive. All the plants survived and did grow whilst away, were a bit straggly and not as green as I would like, but once returned to full controller mode all plants recovered OK.
 
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