Need to go out of town

[H.K.Luterman]

Hey guys. So, my mom is getting a full knee replacement this summer, and I have to fly up to help out. I was thinking being up there for 10 days. Would my fish make it that long? I'm not entirely sure I trust anyone to feed them. 

[Brandy]

This is tough, because I know what you mean about trust. Will the house be empty, or will you have someone on site who can at least notice a major catastrophe?

In cases like this, if I have no one, I tend to choose a non-pet person, who will follow directions exactly and have them check in once or twice a week. With pre-measured portions, and no inclination to get creative (hide the rest of the food so they can't over feed because the "poor things look hungry") they can't do too much damage.

[H.K.Luterman]

13 minutes ago, Brandy said:

This is tough, because I know what you mean about trust. Will the house be empty, or will you have someone on site who can at least notice a major catastrophe?

In cases like this, if I have no one, I tend to choose a non-pet person, who will follow directions exactly and have them check in once or twice a week. With pre-measured portions, and no inclination to get creative (hide the rest of the food so they can't over feed because the "poor things look hungry") they can't do too much damage.

Yeaaah. I'm a nervous nellie. I do know a friend we trust to come into the house to check on things, so if I made a DETAILED instruction page with portioned out food she could probably do it. I guess that means I can stay up there longer then. 

[Hobbit]

I pre-portion out my fish food as well when I go out of town. I write the day of the week on the baggies, or more recently I used a pill box. That way our 15 year old neighbor can’t mess things up too bad.

Your fish are a little e complicated since they’re eating raw tilapia, but I bet you can come up with a good system!

With Dragon’s recent attempt to eat Dinky, I would be worried about letting them go hungry. It seems like Dragon does not like being hungry.

[H.K.Luterman]

1 minute ago, Hobbit said:

I pre-portion out my fish food as well when I go out of town. I write the day of the week on the baggies, or more recently I used a pill box. That way our 15 year old neighbor can’t mess things up too bad.

Your fish are a little e complicated since they’re eating raw tilapia, but I bet you can come up with a good system!

With Dragon’s recent attempt to eat Dinky, I would be worried about letting them go hungry. It seems like Dragon does not like being hungry.

Pill box is a good idea, I think I'll definitely do that. 

Dragon is the one I worry about. Dinky has gotten much bigger since then and I think that incident was a case of Dragon having bad eyesight and just snapping at movement. BUT, yeah. They like frozen cubes of brine shrimp and mysis shrimp so that would be an easy feeding option; just throw 3 cubes into the tank. I'll have to put the packages somewhere highly visible with giant stickers on it. 

[CalmedByFish]

Hobbit's pill box idea is great. We have 1 that's a row of 7 boxes. There may be multi-week ones. Each tank could have a system like that, sitting on the lid perhaps. However you do it, I suggest writing the day of the week, date, and specific tank on each portion of food. 

Edited April 26, 2021 by CalmedByFish

[binkysmom]

Pre pandemic my last big vacation was 3 weeks. I preportioned food into zip lock baggies, taped to the aquariums.

Tanks were fed every 3/4 days and water top up only (instructions on adding dechlorinator were included). Everything survived.

My shrimp only tank I added some botanicals approx a week before I left. They got fed once during the 3 weeks and just grazed on biofilm etc.

Fish were happy when I was back and they started to get more variety in their diet again.