distant feeding

[allan]

I was wondering what some of you out there do when you have to travel out of town to keep the fish fed.

Thinking along the lines of about a week at a time. I feed mine frozen food, and just short of hanging a freezer over my tank with a timer I can't figure out how to feed them during my absence.

I've been trying to get them used to flake food but none of them seem to appreciate my efforts.

If I breed a bunch of brine shrimp and turn them loose in the tank would they last long enough to cover a five day trip?

I imagine for the rabbit fish if I put out a healthy dose of macro he will do fine, but then again I only put it out once or twice a week because he will eat until its gone and his belly gets really big.

No worries, not leaving anytime soon, but during the holiday our entire family might want to go somewhere.

[Kristy]

Best to train someone to come over once a day, check the tank and feed. We have trained my mother in law. I put the frozen cubes in a day of the week vitamin/meds/pill container. She pulls it from the freezer, puts that days cubes in some tank water and dumps it in.

In addition, provide your feeder with emergency contact names and phone numbers from fish stores and/or MAAST members. Just in case, trust me something will go wrong. HTH- Mike & Kristy

[Europhyllia]

We have a pet sitter. She works at the San Antonio Zoo. No other pet sitter would work for us we have that many critters... lol

[allan]

I took Kristy's advice and trained a human (Scott the Feeder) to come over once a day thaw, rinse, slowly feed the fish. I placed the numbers of two OUTSTANDING members of this fine organization to be on standby. I gave him their numbers, their address, and their email addresses along with the names of their kids and pets. :)

It went well over thanksgiving and fortunately Scott the Feeder lives just a few houses down.

[Kristy]

As much as I like getting the credit when it works out :) that advice came from Mike back before he had his own user name and posted from our account. Glad to hear you found Scott the feeder and it all worked out. Karin, you really pulled up a post with some dust on it!

[txav8r]

LOL way to dig Karin!

Allan, I'm right down the road.

[Europhyllia]

LOL way to dig Karin!

Allan, I'm right down the road.

Didn't see enough new ones to read so I had to dig deeper! LOL

[cbianco]

Best to train someone to come over once a day, check the tank and feed. We have trained my mother in law. I put the frozen cubes in a day of the week vitamin/meds/pill container. She pulls it from the freezer, puts that days cubes in some tank water and dumps it in.

In addition, provide your feeder with emergency contact names and phone numbers from fish stores and/or MAAST members. Just in case, trust me something will go wrong. HTH- Mike & Kristy

I almost spit coffee on my computer screen! :lmao2:

Good to hear Kristy. :)

Christopher

[Kristy]

Hmmm.... maybe I need to have more coffee in me to sharpen my wits, but I am not getting the joke?

My mom really is our feeder when we are both out of town (since Mike wrote that, he referred to her as his mother-in-law) and she really does get a little training on the care of the tank(s) each time. In fact, she jokes about needing to come over to get her "in-service" refresher training before we travel. Then she gave us a really hard time because we left her pages of notes for instruction, more than she needed for our two girls, our dogs, cats, or the house all combined!

[cbianco]

Kristy, out of you'r entire post, for some reason the only thing that stuck in my head was "we have trained my mother-in-law." No disrespect what so ever but when I hear the word train, I think of my dogs, not a human.

Sorry for the crude joke...:red_smile:

Christopher

[Kristy]

Ah, well, that explains why I didn't get the joke. As a therapist who uses cognitive behavioral techniques every day to help people change their behaviors, I see a LOT of similarities between training dogs and training people and even use dog-training metaphors to explain how you can reinforce a (child's / spouse's / etc.) behavior negatively or positively. I talk all the time about how Mike is such a great husband because he is so readily trainable, among other reasons, of course!

[Bill S]

We use an automatic feeder daily with Spectrum pellets - so when we're gone on weekends, they do without frozen for a day. For longer periods, our neighbor comes over.

[Europhyllia]

Ah, well, that explains why I didn't get the joke. As a therapist who uses cognitive behavioral techniques every day to help people change their behaviors, I see a LOT of similarities between training dogs and training people and even use dog-training metaphors to explain how you can reinforce a (child's / spouse's / etc.) behavior negatively or positively. I talk all the time about how Mike is such a great husband because he is so readily trainable, among other reasons, of course!

I didn't know you did that! How much is it to train a spouse or in-laws? Does insurance pay for spouse training?

[Kristy]

I didn't know you did that!

That's because I try to keep it on the down-low :ph34r:... really changes how people interact with me and view me once they realize I'm a therapist.

How much is it to train a spouse or in-laws? Does insurance pay for spouse training?

Insurance absolutely covers marriage counseling (which is most of what I do these days, through a contract with the military) so spouses can "train" one another, usually with a co-pay and all that jazz. In-laws, unfortunately, are largely untrainable!



:bigsmile:

PS: Apologies to everyone, especially Allan, for taking this thread so far off course!