Vacation

[roscozman]

Since my wife and I are fairly new to this hobby (8-9 months), what should we consider when going on vacation? Our 125gal tank and 12gal Biocube will be alone for about a week. We do have a neighbor coming over to help with the house, but what precautions should we prepare for?

Thanks.

[Kristy]

Don't go.



Just kidding, of course! But remember Murphy's Law... this IS the time that something funky will happen with your tank.

We have carefully trained my mom (who is our house-sitter while we're away) and she is great about following all our directions to the letter. Even with that, things have gone wrong that you cannot possibly prepare for. I recommend getting the phone numbers of a couple of knowedgeable MAASTards that you are friendly with and that hopefully live nearby. We like to have a couple of folks lined up "on call" in case my mom doesn't know what to do about a complication and we always offer the same in turn, just in case. Also, several LFS that make house calls offer vacation services or will be available in case of emergency.

[Mr Cob]

Some notes as I think of them (in no particular order):

-leave some water prepared for a water change
-leave some RO/DI water ready for top-off (hopefully you have an auto top-off setup on the 120gallon already)
-Plan to tell who ever will be feeding the tank to feed less than you do...because they ALWAYS feed more! Trust me. Non reefers and people not familiar with advanced fish keeping always think the fish will starve. Note: It can take a month + for a fish to starve. For small 1-3 day trips I don't worry about my tank and have everything set to auto-pilot. The fish will feed on the reef. The worst thing you could have happen is over feeding while you're gone.
-set your skimmer to skim a bit drier than normal... don't want a over filling collection cup while you're out.
-do a water change before you go
-test all parameters before you go and make sure nothing needs to be addressed
-add some algae from the refugium to the display before you leave to aid in feeding the fish...attatch it to a clip or ruber band it to a rock
-leave your Air Conditioner/heater unit as is!

That's all I got...make sure you leave specific instructions and explain the importance to following them. I love the idea of leaving other maastard numbers. You can add mine if you like but might want to find someone closer.

[Joshua]

Depends on how automated you are, with auto-topoff, calcium reactor, pretty much everything accounted for all I ever did was put one of those battery powered air pumps on the tank that would kick on if the power goes out. Heck sometimes I wouldn't look at the tank for a couple weeks even if we were home.

[d3rryc]

Flag the main faucet in the kitchen sink as "DON'T USE THIS!!!"

[Mr Cob]

Flag the main faucet in the kitchen sink as "DON'T USE THIS!!!"

LOL! Nice.

Might as well flag the toilet while you're at it. You never know.

[medi]

Just a little vacation horror story. When I still had my 110G I left town and gave a buddy who knows quite a bit about FW fish, but nothing about SW in charge. I gave him specific instructions on what to take care of, which he did to the "T", but he also thought I had forgotten to turn the air conditioner up, and he closed the door to the hottest room in out house, which happened to be where the tank was. So anyways, long story short, we came home and the tank was at 96 degrees, and every coral that I owned with the exception of xenia was fried. This was a devastating and very expensive loss. I sold my 110G soon after.

[CoryDude]

Perfect timing on this. I'm getting ready to go away for about a week and was just wondering what I needed to do to prepare our tanks.

Would anyone recommend an automatic feeder and using pellets? We may not have a house sitter available.

[Joshua]

Would anyone recommend an automatic feeder and using pellets? We may not have a house sitter available.

No your animals will be fine for a week without feeding. I used to leave for 2 weeks at a time when we hunted old Mexico and my tank always looked better when I got back, no feeding, nothing.