Going away for 5 weeks !!

mrpenguin

New member
I am going to be going away for around 5 weeks ... I know nobody that can take care of a Salt Water aquarium.

I have friends that come come everyday to feed the fish and to add RO water to compensate for evaporation and to add 2 part but I don't want them to do anything else in fear that they will do something bad and kill my corals.

I have the following questions ...

Can my fish be fed once a day ?
Can they go without food over the weekend ?.. no food for two days ?

What is the minimum amount of time I can keep my lights on over the tank ?
I want to keep them on for as short a time as possible in fear of over heating the water in the hot summer days.

Is it OK to go 4 weeks to maybe 6 weeks without doing a water change ?

Thanks ....
 
Re: Going away for 5 weeks !!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15440175#post15440175 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mrpenguin
I am going to be going away for around 5 weeks ... I know nobody that can take care of a Salt Water aquarium.

I have friends that come come everyday to feed the fish and to add RO water to compensate for evaporation and to add 2 part but I don't want them to do anything else in fear that they will do something bad and kill my corals.

I have the following questions ...

Can my fish be fed once a day ?
Can they go without food over the weekend ?.. no food for two days ?

What is the minimum amount of time I can keep my lights on over the tank ?
I want to keep them on for as short a time as possible in fear of over heating the water in the hot summer days.

Is it OK to go 4 weeks to maybe 6 weeks without doing a water change ?

Thanks ....


Your fish will be fine for a couple of days without food, heck i have gone for more than that without feeding them

The minimun amount of time i would suggest is 6 hours, specially with sps

You can go as long as you want without a water change, i lasted about 6 months without one until i got bored and did one, lol

sana
 
Re: Re: Going away for 5 weeks !!

Re: Re: Going away for 5 weeks !!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15440196#post15440196 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sanababit
Your fish will be fine for a couple of days without food, heck i have gone for more than that without feeding them

The minimun amount of time i would suggest is 6 hours, specially with sps

You can go as long as you want without a water change, i lasted about 6 months without one until i got bored and did one, lol

sana

+1

5-6 hours MH or T5's are fine. Feeding every other day, no problem.

Same with the water changes. Just do one before ya leave.

Focus on writing up a if - then scenario for equipment and anything else thay may potentially go wrong. If this happens - do this.
 
my fish have gone 5 days with no food and are fine(they dont allways catch food in the wild you know) as far as lights go ide say no less than 3 hours of ho a day(read that in many books)
 
Be careful when you let others feed your fish. They tend to WAYYYYYYY over feed. I would make sure you specify that over feeding is far more harmful than under feeding. just my 2 cents.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15441271#post15441271 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by blakeorme
Be careful when you let others feed your fish. They tend to WAYYYYYYY over feed. I would make sure you specify that over feeding is far more harmful than under feeding. just my 2 cents.
That part at least, is easy to fix. Before you go, put your food into the small ziplock sandwich bags, enough for one feeding in each bag. That way all the person feeding your tank has to do is dump it in. A box of the bags is less than $2, cheap tank insurance.
 
Hi! For food portions, I use those weekly pill containers, the plastic ones that have one section for each day of the week. Jean
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15442404#post15442404 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Jean Corcoran
Hi! For food portions, I use those weekly pill containers, the plastic ones that have one section for each day of the week. Jean
I hate it when people have better ideas than mine...lol
 
+1 to the advice about portioning the food yourself and also setting up a sort of "what if" checklist for whoever is there.

One thing I've done in the past is to have a web cam set up to keep an eye on the tank. This became very handy when I was having an issue, and my caretaker was literally able to point the camera at the equipment that was being adjusted so that we could avoid communication issues.

Another option might be to somehow label key equipment for the caretaker in case of issues. Skimmer may make sense to everyone on these boards, but to some people it may as well be another language.
 
Thanks for all the advice .....
I didn't think about over feeding ... will definitely cut up my frozen food so that they only give them one a day.
 
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