Vacations & Leaving your tank alone

sen5241b

sen5241b

Reef enthusiast
I left early Friday and spend a long weekend at the beach. I came back late last night (Monday) to find the water tank sputtering bubbles and the temperature down 4F from its norm --probably due to so many air bubbles. I didn't have enough water in there when I left. Also, my hermits finished their feast on my last Mexican turbo. I had someone drop by Sunday morning to feed the fish.

Question: can you leave a mature tank alone for 2 weeks assuming you have an automatic top-off (ATO) and an auto feeder? (While I'm gone, I can put my computer battery backup on my tank pump and heater to deal with an hour or two power outage.) I'm going back to Costa Rica next December so I have plenty of time to rig up something and test it for weeks if not months in advance.
 
If you got ONE trusted friend in the entire world--you got months to train him/her how to top off and feed your tank for a couple weeks while you're gone.

The person only needs to come over every couple days to top it off and feed. Maybe 5 or 6 times in 2 weeks?

Thats what I'd do. Mechanical stuff always finds a way to work perfectly while you're around. Then, when you leave town for a few days, it always gets jacked up somehow and kills the tank. :frustrat:
 
You can only expect the worse when you leave.

Find someone to babysit your tank when you are gone. IMO, its harder to leave a SW tank than it is leaving a dog or cat.
 
An ATO is going to be a huge help when it comes to leaving a tank alone for a couple weeks. As said above, having someone come over every other day to feed the fish and check on stuff is necessary for most people. Its not a big deal though, I just leave a very, very detailed set of instructions and give the person my cell and thats that. You don't need someone who knows fish to look after your fish, although it helps, instructions are the key.
 
SSalty said:
You can only expect the worse when you leave.

Find someone to babysit your tank when you are gone. IMO, its harder to leave a SW tank than it is leaving a dog or cat.
Click to expand...

I'd rather leave the kids at home alone than my tank.
But,A good ATO and a good friend to feed and check on it,will do go a long way.
 
Anything can happen. To prove my point I have never had any major problems with my ATO. But when I got up this morning my tank was blowing micro bubbles like crazy. To come find out for some reason my ATO stopped working. I haven't figured out why. But I got it working again. So I would finnd a tank sitter and write down step by step instructions.
 
Piggy said:
Anything can happen. To prove my point I have never had any major problems with my ATO. But when I got up this morning my tank was blowing micro bubbles like crazy. To come find out for some reason my ATO stopped working. I haven't figured out why. But I got it working again. So I would finnd a tank sitter and write down step by step instructions.
Click to expand...

Sheesh, what kind of ATO was it?
 
Piggy said:
Anything can happen. To prove my point I have never had any major problems with my ATO. But when I got up this morning my tank was blowing micro bubbles like crazy. To come find out for some reason my ATO stopped working. I haven't figured out why. But I got it working again. So I would finnd a tank sitter and write down step by step instructions.
Click to expand...

probably that dam clown :D
 
If you can get good valves then you can absolutely do it yourself. Grainger sells a really good float valve that you can use for an ATO, but you will need a company name since they don't sell to the public. A float valve that opens the circuit when the water gets too low and closes it when it is high again works well. A safety valve is usually used as well, this is just another float valve that closes the circuit when the valve is raised, this makes sure that if the first float valve doesn't close the circuit there is a back up so you don't flood the house.
 
I DIY'd my ATO. No problems so far. But then again, it's a very simple ATO, non-electric gravity ATO. I figure the more simple, the less parts there are to break!

In the past, I've had someone come over once a day to feed my fish and just make sure everything *looks* like it's working okay. Unless you have a friend who also has a tank, it'd be near impossible to teach someone how every piece of equipment you have should be working and what each does. I have always left the business card of my LFS on the fridge and told the pet sitter to call them if there's a problem. I trust my LFS and they will do 24 hour emergency calls (for a fee of course). I figure if something is broken enough for the average pet sitter to notice, it's probably pretty bad.
 
DIY ATO ...

I'm buying the JBR model for approx. $70.

I think the best way to do deal with vacations is to automate as much as possible and ALSO get someone to check on it for you.
 
Your fish can do without food for two weeks better than the tank can deal with the fish being over fed, so choose and train the tank sitter well. Either myself or my employees take care of my tanks and no one else, my landlord will look in on them. If I am leaving for just a few days I do nothing special except put battery operated air pumps in my tanks. My ATO is only hooked up to a one day reservoir. The battery powered air pumps will operate for 3 days without power and only run when there is no power. If leaving for two weeks and without my employees to check on my tanks, I would just use a ATO reservoir sized for the two weeks, and do no coral feeding for two weeks. I would hook up more batteries to the pumps so as to have a possible two weeks of water circulation if the worst came about. But, I have no fish in my coral tanks and I have internet connection to all but my tanks except the tanks in my apartment. My landlord would at least be able to inform me if the equipment is all working and I have an automatic battery started generator in his garage hooked up to supply power to supply power to both his house and my apartment. It was cheap insurance. $1600 including the switching equipment. The switching equipment (at contractor pricing) cost almost as much as the generator. Still, that is just a small percentage of the value of the main display tanks contents.
 
Fatman,

Great and timely information. I worried about a weekend away and how the fish would do without food.

One thing to add, I failed to get a timer for the lights the last time I left for a weekend. I left the lights on all weekend and think I caused photo-stress. I now have the lights on a timer to prevent this during the next trip.


And ... :D:D:D:D:D:D - my youngest boy is up and wanted to see the smiley faces. How can one say no?
 

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