Vacation and Tank Automation

[qasimja]

i will be taking the wife and kids to london and paris march 31st - april 9th me and the wife have been all over europe but this will be the kids first time going trying to see what i need to do for this tank so i can be worry free and not come back to a tank full of dead fish

ive already gotten an ATO with a 20G water container i will do some testing to make sure that will last 9+ days if not i will use an extra 32G brute, gotten an ehiem auto feeder havent set up yet all the fish are eating flakes and pellets and mysis atm i dumped the eshopps hob overflow for a cpr overflow with the aqualifter the eshopp overflow were losing siphon during my outage tests ive got my lights setup on timer and i plan to get a netcam so i can see the tank.

any other tips you guys can suggest let me know my brother will be coming by maybe 2-3 times to check on things and replenish the cats food and change the litter etc but i would rather keep his interaction with my tank to a minimum years back he killed an anenome in my tank when i asked him to stop by when i was out of town and do some maintenance on my tank lol

 

[bzb]

That’s going to be an awesome trip. We’re doing Italy later this year for about 10 days also.

We have a friend coming to house/dog sit (another work from home lottery winner) and while he adores the tank... I’m trying to automate as much as I can before then. I’m planning on covering the tank and sump as much as possible to reduce the evaporation and reduce my light cycle time by a couple hours.

He can feed a couple pinches of flake/pellet and my poor fish friends will just have to go without frozen foods for a week.

Are you dosing anything? Got that automated already?

 

[qasimja]

That’s going to be an awesome trip. We’re doing Italy later this year for about 10 days also.

We have a friend coming to house/dog sit (another work from home lottery winner) and while he adores the tank... I’m trying to automate as much as I can before then. I’m planning on covering the tank and sump as much as possible to reduce the evaporation and reduce my light cycle time by a couple hours.

He can feed a couple pinches of flake/pellet and my poor fish friends will just have to go without frozen foods for a week.

Are you dosing anything? Got that automated already?

no im not dosing anything at the moment ive yet to add any corals into my tank thats my next step once i beat this dinos problem im having its dying off but still there

 

[ZapataInc]

no im not dosing anything at the moment ive yet to add any corals into my tank thats my next step once i beat this dinos problem im having its dying off but still there

As far as your Dino's what are you doing to battle it?

 

[qasimja]

As far as your Dino's what are you doing to battle it?

ive been raising nitrate and phosphate slowly and siphoning it out everyday it hasnt been covering the sand bed as often over the last 7-10 days so im making progress i had the type that covers the sand bed during the day but during the night its mostly gone

 

[qasimja]

also been changing the filter pads almost daily

 

[ZapataInc]

ive been raising nitrate and phosphate slowly and siphoning it out everyday it hasnt been covering the sand bed as often over the last 7-10 days so im making progress i had the type that covers the sand bed during the day but during the night its mostly gone

Since you don't have any corals try doing a lights out period or even a blackout for a few days. I did a lights out period for 3 days. And I also added a UV to my system and that was the final thing that helped me get rid of it.

 

[qasimja]

Since you don't have any corals try doing a lights out period or even a blackout for a few days. I did a lights out period for 3 days. And I also added a UV to my system and that was the final thing that helped me get rid of it.

i tried blacking out they would be gone but after 2-3 days they would start coming back

 

[qasimja]

i do plan to add a uv in the next week or so also

 

[civics14]

Since you don't have any corals try doing a lights out period or even a blackout for a few days. I did a lights out period for 3 days. And I also added a UV to my system and that was the final thing that helped me get rid of it.

I didn’t do lights out, but I did raise my nutrients and the final blow was UV.

My experience with dinos:
I think the higher nutrients kept them from getting worse but wasn’t killing them. Doing water changes made things worst as it kept dropping my nutrients. I attribute the UV as what killed them off because the moment I put it online, the next day I saw a significant amount less.

 

[civics14]

i will be taking the wife and kids to london and paris march 31st - april 9th me and the wife have been all over europe but this will be the kids first time going trying to see what i need to do for this tank so i can be worry free and not come back to a tank full of dead fish

ive already gotten an ATO with a 20G water container i will do some testing to make sure that will last 9+ days if not i will use an extra 32G brute, gotten an ehiem auto feeder havent set up yet all the fish are eating flakes and pellets and mysis atm i dumped the eshopps hob overflow for a cpr overflow with the aqualifter the eshopp overflow were losing siphon during my outage tests ive got my lights setup on timer and i plan to get a netcam so i can see the tank.

any other tips you guys can suggest let me know my brother will be coming by maybe 2-3 times to check on things and replenish the cats food and change the litter etc but i would rather keep his interaction with my tank to a minimum years back he killed an anenome in my tank when i asked him to stop by when i was out of town and do some maintenance on my tank lol

Only thing I would caution is such a large ATO reservoir. If for some weird reason that the ATO get stuck on, it will all dump into the sump. Not sure the size of your sump, but that's a lot of extra water that could wind up on your floor. When I had someone stopping by, I bought several gallons of distilled water and asked the person to refill my current ATO reservoir.

 

[hiimsean]

If you only have fish in the tank I wouldn’t worry too much. What kind of fish do you have? If it’s not something that requires multiple daily feedings that’s even less worrisome. What size tank is it also?

If you have someone that can come over and check things maybe every 3 days this is what I’d do.

Hook up your normal ato, I assume you have a 5g reservoir, then have 2 5g Home Depot buckets full of RODI ready increase the first container empties. Have 3 different baggies with a small amount of food for each feed that way you don’t over feed.

I went to Thailand a few years back and left about 30g of RODI for a friend to just move the water line if the others emptied, prolly needed a little more. Then I had food separated for each feed. He came over 3 times in a two week period. Granted it was summer when I went and evaporation was a lot higher.

 

[ActiveAngel]

as for advice, I would aim to minimize feedings; size and quantity. Most fish will be fine for 9 days without any food, so smaller and less frequent feedings will minimize some risk if you don’t have complete confidence in your auto feeder (I never do, those things fail fairly often for my taste). Honestly, most fish will survive for 4-6 weeks without food, but that is just cruel. My point is that 8-9 days is nothing. In your shoes, I would cut the auto-feeder altogether, and just ask the brother to feed a frozen cube on each visit every 2-3 days; and show him how to do it slowly so all fish have a chance to eat. Regardless of your choice, Everything will be fine.

I also suspect 20g ATO will be plenty for most tanks under 120g or so. Here are some tips if you’re worried that can buy 1-3 extra days. If you decrease your salinity to 1.024... and your ATO runs dry, salinity will start increasing but you will have bought a little extra time as it increases to 1.025 and 1.026.

Another tip is that you can put in a small amount of RO water (I do 1 gallon extra on my 135g system) right before you leave. This will temporarily decrease your salinity slightly, but evaporation will quickly rectify that over the following hours. NOTE: if you choose to do this, test it several days beforehand. It’s possible the extra water volume could cause your skimmer to go wonky.

On that note, I usually decrease my skimmers power on my vacations. Where I’m mostly concerned with keeping the water aerated, even if it pulls only half the regular skimmate.

Lastly, and most importantly, don’t make any manual adjustments in the final 24-48 hours before you leave. Accidents happen all the time, and people forget things. For example: It’s possible that you will want to see something the night before you leave, so you manually turn on the tank lights for a minute. Then when you are done, you accidentally set them to ‘off’ instead of ‘auto’. But if you leave before sun-up, you’ll never know that your lights aren’t on until you get back or your tank-sitter tells you. Either way, it adds to extra stress of “did I forget something?” Not touching the system, aside from feeding and topping off, will help remove that type of small stress.

You’ll have an awesome trip! And the fact that you have a pseudo-tank-sitter will avoid lots of stress. Enjoy yourself!

 

[Adam]

Some great advice above!

You could also see if an ARC member you trust can come by once or twice while your gone. They could come by a few times before you leave and get a full understanding of your system. It's always nice to have an experience set of eyes giving things a once over when you're away. If by chance you didn't want them in your house alone you could see if the visits could be coordinated with when your brother is stopping by. It's also good to have a number your brother can call in case of an emergency.

 

[snowmansnow]

so if this is a fish only tank your worries are WAY minimized
1- make sure your ATO works correctly and has enough water
2- if you use an auto fish feeder run it a week or so BEFORE you leave so that you can make sure the food won't jam it or it gets stuck open or something
3- this time of year double check your heaters and confirm its all good
4- if at all possible have someone come by and give everything the once over in the middle of the trip, or even a few times. Make sure it isn't someone who wants to FIX stuff ha. Just some simple directions to them should be fine like... check ATO (Don't fill with tap), check feeder, check temp.

I think you'll be just fine enjoy the trip

 

[qasimja]

thanks for all the great advice right now i have 2x tomato clownfish 1x yellow tang 1x one spot rabbit 1x coral beauty 1x carberryi anthias and i have 2x squarespot anthias and 1x regal tang in QT that will be added to my tank in the next 3-4 weeks and i feed my fish 2 times a day with nori on a clip every other day