Holiday Feeding

[Bafutbeagle]

I have a 200 Uk gallon tank containing a 12" Red Tailed Giant Gourami, a 16" Silver Arowana, a 12" Snowking Plec and some 5" Clown Fish, it is filtered by a Fluval FX5 and an Eheim 2028.

I am going on holiday for 2 weeks and was wondering whether I could get away with doing a couple of large waterchanges just prior to going away and not feeding the fish for the 2 week period?

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[CFC]

Not feeding will be fine and is probably better for the fish than leaving someone else to feed them and risk putting in too much food and killing them.

 

[cane76]

2 weeks seems like a long time without food wont the arowana start thinking about a clown loach dinner?

 

[ringham]

IMO 2 weeks is too long to go without feeding. I am on holiday right now and i went for 3 weeks, so what I did was I made up 6-8 large-ish bags of food ( half a packet of bloodworm etc.) and once every 3 days my neighbour just empties the bag into the tank. That way the correct amount gets feed and my fish aent hungry.

 

[mr.dark-saint]

Both methods listed are good. I've gone on many vacations where I was away for two weeks plus. Normally I did a water change a week before (just in case something poped up ) and not arrange someone to come and feed while I was away. The "big eaters" like a Bagrus (SP) I had did fine with feeder goldfish left in the tank with him (he ate them when the mood struck) and there would always be a few survivors left when I got back).

But now a days with more active fish I keep perhaps I'd make packets of premeasured food in "Camera Film Canistars" (you know the 35mm plastic numbers) but with digital everything these days one may have to go ask a photograph developers to save you some. The cool thing about the film canistars are that it can hold dry or frozen equally well. This would be carried out something like twice a week or just once a week in these cases less is better (at least I think so ). But even then I'd make sure it's someone who knows what they're doing (at least with your system).

Making a list (with check offs) is also a good thing and tape one on each tank. Like prosedures on shutting off the system so the food does not go immediately in to the sump . Then make sure to turn the system back on. I came up with a system where I use a "Lamp Timer" for the return water pump which goes like this. Take out all the off/stop pegs and leave just the on/start pegs (spaced like every 8 hours or something the point here is to have all of them on) on the timer. This is the place where they turn the pump off by turning the secondary dial to turn it off. If they forget to turn it back on in about 8 hours (at most) it'll trip the water pump back on (kind a like a back up system if they forget to trun it back on). Yeah I'm trusting like that . I like the dial better since if there is a power outage and if you're using digital it won't be blinking 12:00 and not be powered up. (Oh that reminds me make sure your check valves are in working order nothing worse than coming back to dead fish "and" a stinky moldy funky carpet ).