Very long trip: Best strategy with tank?

[DiscusBR]

Hi everyone,

I have a 80g tank (65g of total volume) with 5 wild discus, 4 corydoras, and 2 apistogramas. The tank has a Eheim 2217 canister filter and two sponge filters. In June, I will be out of town for almost the entire month. I will teach a friend how to do 60% water changes (the maximum capacity of my storage barrel). However, I cannot really bother him more than once a week. I will also not ask him to vacum the tank, but just to put the pump in the tank and get the water out. It makes things faster and simpler for him. So please keep it in mind that the tank will have weekly 60% WCs with no bottom vacuuing during my absence. Water will be aired, heated and aged for 24 hours.

I know that for shorter periods of absence the best strategy is to stop feeding the day before the departure, do a big WC, and then leave the fish without food. But that does not sound a good strategy to me for a period of almost a month. So I am currently considering two options:

1. Use the autofeeder to drop a small ammount of flakes once a day;

2. Ask my friend to throw some flakes in the tank when he comes to prepare the storage barrel the day before the WC (thus feeding the fish once a week).

Which is the best strategy? Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[strawberryblonde]

My feeling is that it's easier, and safer, to put the weekly flake feeding into small covered containers (you get to measure out how much they get) and then ask your friend to toss 1 into the tank when he's filling the aging barrel each week.

The fish should be fine with that.

[DonMD]

I agree with Toni, unless you already have an automatic feeder that you can program. Whatever you do, don't let your friend dump food in the tank -- my experience has been that friends always think the fish need 100x more that they really do. Small feedings once or twice a week, with the w/c's, and I think you'll be fine.

[DiscusBR]

Thank you Toni and Don. I will do as you suggest.

[DiscusBR]

Just an update on this long trip. I came home today after 32 days of absence. In this period, my friend fed the fish once a week and did a weekly 60% water change (a total of four WCs). I tested the water parameters and found: ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and nitrate 0. Ph is in the same level when I left: 6.6. And the fish look great.

I am really surprised how well my Eheim 2217 and the two sponge filters are working as biological filtration. So this weekly schedule for feeding and WCs seems to work!

The only bad news: the tank is completely covered by brown algae. I am asking for input in the water section in another thread.

Thanks all.

[dbfzurowski]

Thats good. As far as algae, easiest way to rid of it is to simply keep the tank dark for few days

[Sean Buehrle]

All the algae is the reason you have 0 nitrate. Probably a good thing it grew. Sounds like everything went well.


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