How to care for my fish when I am away.

[Morgrid]

This is is common question here so I am posting some of the things I do for taking care of my fish when I am gone. If anyone else has ideas please respond and I will add them. Don't respond to this unless you have something you want me to add.

First off you need to determine if help is needed. If you will only be gone for 2 or 3 days there is really no need to get help in almost all cases. Your fish can easily fast this long and if there are live plants in the tank they can help provide a small amount of forage. At 4 or 5 days you may consider getting help, it is your call and may depend on how easy it is for you to get the help. At a week or more you likely should get help.

There are automatic feeders out there and for those of you with one or two tanks they may be perfect. Get one well in advance and so you can experiment with the setup and operation.

There are the weekend and week long feeders out there. They are basically plaster of paris with some fishfood imbedded inside. As the plaster dissolves in your water the fishfood is slowly released. I personally do not use or like this type of thing as it pollutes the water and may do more harm than good in many cases. You may want to try them for yourself though and depending on your situation it may do what you need.

There are automatic light timers out there that might be a good idea but if you have a lot of tanks instructions need provided. If I had to go with or without the lights on for a few days I would leave them on. Either scenario can cause problems so you need to work this out for your situation.

It will come about that you will find need to travel or be away from home for some time on occasion. You need to be prepared in advance for this. Get some close friends or nieghbors trained up in advance. Preferably find someone who has a tank of their own and or is genuinely interested in fish keeping. Spend some time training the caretakers, instructions are not enough, you should walk them through the routine several times as well as providing written instructions.

If you have several tanks it is a good idea to label each tank numbers work for me. Provide well written instructions for the person and when you leave tape a copy or two to a tank or two in case the original gets lost.

Typically when setting up for someone else to care for your fish you will want to have them feed less than you yourself would normally. This should help prevent/delay any water quality issues. I usually feed twice a day but I will have a caretaker feed once daily and usually about half what I would do on a normal feeding. If the caretaker must miss a feeding themselves let them know 2 or 3 days is fine and not to feed extra the day before they go as it will cause a lot of problems.

Salt or spice shakers work well for crushed flake or granulated food. Fill the container and experiment. Instructions for its use specify the amount of shakes for the tank. This is somewhat variable so remember to have them feed sparingly.

I have also used kitchen measuring spoons, these work best with pelleted food. 1/4 and 1/8 teaspoons are good for a lot of tanks but some larger cichlid tanks and such can use bigger spoons. Make sure to specify level spoonfulls as rounded spoons can be subjective. Some folks use premeasured baggies or containers of food, this is along the same lines but the containers have to be prefilled. If you have a lot of tanks and/or will be gone a long time the prefilled, premeasured containers can be a pain, other than that they work great.

Live foods and small amounts of food can be counted. I would try and avoid the live stuff but if you have killies or other special needs fish you may not be able to get around it. Something like 5 fruit flies a day for this tank works out well. The same can be applied to blackworms. Things like baby brine shrimp, mocroworms, and grindle worms are very hard to estimate so unless you have someone well trained you should avoid these. If you have single bettas or other fish counting out pellets can work out well one or two pellets per day for some fish works well.  Vegetables like zuchinni slices can be setup on a counting method; "put one slice every 2 days in this tank".

Make sure you let the carekeeper know that if there are any dead fish they need to be removed. You may also want them to stop feeding a tank that has a fish or two die.

If you are going to be gone longer than two weeks you may need the person to do some partial water changes. I personally try to avoid going this far even though I have some very experienced people that help me. If you do need to do maintenance while you are gone you need to run them through the routine several times, again provide written instructions that are very specific; "On Monday May 3rd change 25% of the water in tank 1 (refer to the procedure you provide for changing water). Vacuum the gravel on the right half of the tank (again provide a procedure). Take the sponge filter out and rinse it in a bucket of room temperature water (yet another procdure)." Your needs will be variable so make the instructions clear.

Make sure you find someone who will be responsible and make sure you pay them for their time so they will be responsible. It is also a good idea to do your tank maintenance (water changes and filter cleaning) right before you leave. It really pays to be prepared here as you never know when something might come up and you might have to leave in a hurry.



 

[SerVo]

For a person to feed while I'm gone, I use the pill things that have the days Sun-Sat wrote on them.  These work for most foods from flakes - frozen.  For multiple tanks, just write the name of the tank/ label the tank on the side of it.

Also for feeding directions and/or other maintance i have pre written directions at all times next to my tanks.  Included is do / don'ts, and discriptions of problems, such as Ick.  To put with one of these is those little pamplets at fish stores with pictures and all (of disease or problems).

[EmeraldEmpress]

Servo makes a good point, that it is probably in the best interest of your fish that no matter weather you travel or not, to have written instructions on taking care of your fish.  No one ever knows when they might get sick or be injured and not able to care for their fish.  I believe that it would be a wise idea to live very specific written instructions with your tank(s) at all times for their own well being.

[Muchlee]

Thanx for all the info,
Dunno wat i'd do without you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Katierox]

you also might try aotu matic feeders..it depends on how long you are leaveing for...my sggestion would be to try and get some one to care foro them...just in case tho  good luck

[JTF]

I use a battery operated auto feeder, no problems.

[nonamethefish]

It didn't seem to be mentioned-but "cube type" or otherwise flat packs which you have cut are another countable type of food. Of course they only work in large tanks unless you make very small pieces.

[DarkElf]

It didn't seem to be mentioned-but "cube type" or otherwise flat packs which you have cut are another countable type of food. Of course they only work in large tanks unless you make very small pieces.

If you get someone to thaw in aquarium water (or tap water-lol-I do) in small ammounts, you can give them eyedropper directions. 1 eyedropper for fry tank, 2 for ten gallon overstuffed guppy adult tank, blah blah, and drop leftovers (usually a sizeable treat) in cichlid tank in living room...........this is how my kids do it. One or two run-throughs and easy to remember:) One cube cdan feed a LOT of tanks if you dropper spareingly........

[brad9292]

Are there any vacation feeder blocks that are meaty because most of my fish are carnivorous?

[Tropical Dude]

Tetra is making a new gel based feeder(plaster free) that I seen on www.drsfostersmith.com a while back but I just seen it in my Wal*Mart here recently, it is suppose to feed for 14 days but it doesn't dissolve so it could last longer or shorter. The only problem I worry about is that my fish might not realize that it is food (it is in a little shallow cup type thing and they come in single packs for around $3 at wally world) and they can eat it, they are used to getting algae wafers so I don't think it would be a problem for me though, has anyone used these, I have a 6 day trip coming up so I would like to know how good they work. BTW I don't use plaster based feeders so they aren't an option