59 What to do on Vacations
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This article is from the Beginning Fishkeeping FAQ, by Thomas Narten with numerous contributions by others.
59 What to do on Vacations
Healthy fish can easily go a week without food. When you go out of
town for the weekend, don't bother getting someone to feed your fish.
(Indeed, someone not familiar with fish tanks is likely to overfeed
your fish while you are gone, leaving you a mess to deal with when you
return.) Stay away from those ``vacation feeders'' that slowly
dissolve. They can upset the pH of your tank and lead to excessive
food in your tank. Electrically-operated automatic feeders, though,
can be useful as you ``pre-measure'' the amount of food it dispenses
each day.
If you're going away for longer than a week you will have to make
arrangements for someone to feed the fish. Tank minding companies and
some fish stores will do this for a fee, but most people ask a friend
or neighbor who doesn't keep fish themselves. Sustained overfeeding
could overload your filter and wipe out your tank, and the best way to
avoid the risk of this happening is to make up individual packages
(such as small envelopes) each containing a day's worth of food. The
fish don't have to be fed every day, and shouldn't be given more than
one day's normal amount of food at a time, even if they've gone a few
days without. Be sure to warn your helper not to make up for days they
have missed by giving extra food.
If your tank has a high evaporation rate you may also want to arrange
for it to be topped off with fresh water. This is most important in a
marine tank, as you don't want the salinity drifting too high.
You can't guarantee there won't be a major equipment failure or some
other kind of disaster while you're away, but you can minimize the
risk by replacing any suspect equipment well in advance (so you can be
sure the replacement is working). Don't add any new fish in the month
before your vacation in case they introduce disease that takes some
time to come to light. Clean your tank and filter and do a normal
water change before you go, but if you've neglected maintenance don't
wait until the day before you leave and then blitz it. That will
stress your fish and perhaps damage your filtration bacteria just when
they least need it.
If there is a serious problem, the chances are that it will be
discovered too late to do anything about it. However, looking after
someone else's fish can feel like a heavy burden of responsibility,
and your helper might have better peace of mind if they have the
number of a fish store or some other source of expert advice to call
in an emergency.
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