# Will be away from home - Temperature, lightning and food??



## ramon82 (Oct 20, 2009)

Hi all

As subject suggests I will be abroad for a week. I usually take care of the lightning, temperature and food needs myself but now I am at a loss on how to do. Any ideas how I can automate these essentials?

I got some weeks chance left. At the moment got only some yoyo loaches and guppies in my aquarium. You can take a look at YouTube - My new aquarium [added guppies and yoyo loaches]

Thanks


----------



## brimac40 (Jan 11, 2010)

A timer for your light , a good automatic feeder (depending on how many days you will be gone ) , and the Temperature shouldn't be a problem if you have a good heater .

If you have someone there who can feed your fish , take foil and divvy out their daily rations so they will not over feed . when I have someone looking after my fish , I cut their feeding back to once a day to make it easy on them . I take a small square piece of foil , place the food in it and twist the top closed and line them up for the person doing the feeding . It looks like some crack dealer with his product ready to sell on the street , but I don't have to worry about them overfeeding .


----------



## James0816 (Jun 19, 2009)

brimac40 said:


> A timer for your light , a good automatic feeder (depending on how many days you will be gone ) , and the Temperature shouldn't be a problem if you have a good heater .
> 
> If you have someone there who can feed your fish , take foil and divvy out their daily rations so they will not over feed


x2 on the timer and auto feeder.

If you go the route of having a fish sitter come and feed them, I would highly suggest preping the food yourself. I've done this twice with written instructions only to come back and find the tanks mucked up. The best thing to do would be to get one of those pill cases that are good for a week and put the food in there by day. This way, your sitter just has to dump that days worth of food in the tank. Peace of mind it is.


----------



## NursePlaty (Feb 5, 2010)

*^+3*


----------



## brimac40 (Jan 11, 2010)

James0816 said:


> x2 on the timer and auto feeder.
> 
> If you go the route of having a fish sitter come and feed them, I would highly suggest preping the food yourself. I've done this twice with written instructions only to come back and find the tanks mucked up. The best thing to do would be to get one of those pill cases that are good for a week and put the food in there by day. This way, your sitter just has to dump that days worth of food in the tank. Peace of mind it is.


This is why I use the pre-portioned method and I hide the rest of the fish food . I gave one "fish sitter" very detailed directions on proper feeding , but they liked to watch the "feeding frenzy" so they fed A LOT . And this made a mess of my tanks .

I like the pill case method , better than my foil method . But both work as long as their was not some strong pain meds in the pill case and it wasn't cleaned out and the dust from the pills got on the fish food . Come home and find your fish tripping out , listening to the Grateful Dead . But that is what I would do (and I am going to do) is buy a weekly pill case , this way there is no chance of contamination to the food and no chance the fish sitter can over feed .


----------



## flyin-lowe (Oct 3, 2009)

To me if you are only going to be gone a week I would feed them a little heavy the day before and the day you leave and not worry about them. Most fish can go a couple weeks in tank without being fed. I have heard to many horror stories about auto feeders going bad and flooding a tank with food. Timer, heater (if the cold is an issue) and have a good vacation.


----------



## brimac40 (Jan 11, 2010)

Agreed , I have went 5 days without feeding mine and they have done fine .

With automatic feeders if you want to go that route , one must remember , you get what you pay for .


----------

