Extended time away from your tank

[ocd_mariner]

With the holidays coming up, I'm sure some of you, like me, may be visiting family, taking you away from your aquarium for several days.

Im curious how the rest of you deal with this? Make them come to you? Do you have a specialist friend? I'm going to be away for five days. One of my wife's friends son usually takes care of the cats. He's a pretty responsible kid. I'm sure he could handle the basic stuff. However, in my experience, the basic stuff never happens while I'm away.

Maybe I'm just looking for reassurance.

 

[crumbletop]

I'm going to be doing my first extended trip (7 days) away from the tank this Christmas. I have auto topoff, so I'm good to go there. I also think the fish will do fine without feeding for that long, but I'm planning on making up some small baggies of flake food for someone to put in the tank every other day or so. I'll measure out the proper amount and label the bag. Even if the fish don't get the food, I think they'll be fine, though. My major concern is the dip in Ca or Alk. I could also measure out some 2-part for someone to dose for me, but I'm a bit wary about that. I don't think the Ca/Alk will drop too much over 7 days, especially since I've got a kalk reactor going -- so I think I'm pretty good overall. I'm interested to hear what others do, or whether my thoughts are faulty. I sure don't want my tank to crash while I'm away

 

[DMBillies]

We have cats, so we need people to stop by at least every other day to scoop litter boxes and make sure they still have food and water (we have automatic feeders and waterers, but sometimes they knock the water over). For the most part I don't worry about feeding except maybe once in the middle of the week. I have refugia on my tanks and most of my critters just graze for themselves. I have them topoff the tanks that don't have automatic ones when they stop by for the cats. Other than that, I just do a water change before I leave and try to keep on schedule with that. I don't have a lot of complicated equipment dosing things, so I don't really worry about that and I've never had any of my levels be very seriously off when I get home... I also don't have a lot of SPS to drag down my calcium levels very quickly. I'm hoping that if there is ever a real emergency I can have my friends that help us contact some of you guys from the club to help them, but as I said a lot of my set-ups are relatively straightforward, so most emergencies I think I could solve on the phone.

Maybe by not worrying I keep Murphy away...

 

[KAiNE]

LOL.... I use it as an excuse NOT to go!

We are pretty screwed when it comes to going on vacation and such, with the birds and the tanks.

I drip about 4 gallons of Kalk and drip/dose 300ml of 2-part daily (trying to hit 9dkh/3.2meq/l but never get higher than about 8.8dkh). My kalk drip can handle 5-6 days but if i dont add the 2 part, ALK would hit ~7.3 in the first 24hrs but would probably stay around there due to the Kalk - I hope.
I do know that if my kalk tub goes dry, my PH hits ~7.7/8 inside of 12hrs.

If I came to a situation and we "had" to go somewhere for an extended time,
I'd post here and ask for help!!

 

[Mikeyjer]

Since we had sooooo many animals, we had a friend stayed over to watch the animals while we were away. She was on vacation and she did not mind to stay over. She even kept the house clean!!!! I thought her how to take care of my animals, how to top off my tanks, which I premeasure everything ahead of time and dated all the jugs and all she have to do is pour them into the sump. I feed my fish frozen food so they're all cut up and separated, all she have to do is defrost them and put them in. My tank levels stays pretty normal and I can go a week without dosing, but have to dose the moment I get back so she didn't have to do anything with that part. So just get a friend that's good with animals and someone you trust to take care of the tanks. Of course I was still freaking out about leaving my tanks and animals while I was on vacation since I lost a puppy once before when the previous friend did not watch her closely, she died while I was away.......But everything was just fine with my good friend.....