Holiday fish food

[Jinx_]

Why make them if they are trash?

It's marketing, gives money to the companies. Plus if they make a holiday block and people see those, they'll of course buy worried the fish might die of starvation if it's a week long holiday. So a scare tactic to get people to buy those.

These blocks stay for long in water which causes waste and pollution, and most likely ammonia spikes. Not pleasant

 

[fishorama]

We have a former "manny" neighbor (male nanny) come over every day (except weekends) if we're gone for 2 weeks. He knows how to tell if the filters need help or if something else might be wrong. I give a representative idea of how much to feed each tank. He can figure it out.

Where we used to live, we had a neighbor or the pro pet sitter neighbor come over. She didn't know anything about fish or birds, but she was unflappable when a fish jumped out. She just picked it up & put back in the tank; no problems!

I don't think the fish would be harmed with every other day feeding or even way less. My husband disagrees, so we pay to have it his way...

Those hard vacation blocks are not something I'll ever use again. I was given 2 different auto feeders but haven't ever tried them. I prefer a real person, even an inexperienced 1. They can always call us if they need to. I may give away the auto feeders or save them for an emergency.

I don't think I've seen gel feeders, but they're not something I'd look to buy either.

 

[Jinx_]

I think a great idea for when you're gone on a holiday is to get someone look after the fish.

You can get a small segregated storage boxlet like this one:

And have day names that agree for how long you're going to be gone.

Have some food amounts in each compartment that you normally would feed your fish.

It'd just make things easier for the caretaker, and would ease your mind

 

[raylove]

I went away for six weeks last year and my fish were fine with an Eheim fish feeder. I did get a family member to pop in after about 4 weeks to change a couple of buckets of water and gravel vac the substrate.
When I got back the tank looked a bit of a mess as the plants were suffering from a lack of ferts and there was a fair bit of algae on the glass, but the fish were all perfectly OK.

I made another interesting observation recently. I went away for 2 weeks and needed to set up an automatic feeder on another small tank that I am using temporarily. In order to accommodate the feeder, the tank lid needed to be propped open and I was concerned about evaporation so I tested this before going. Over 14 days the level dropped about 1 inch, so I concluded that this wasn't going to be a problem. However, when I got back the level had dropped about 4 inches and the internal filter was only just about functioning properly. I realised that the reason for this is probably because I turned the heating in the house down while I was away so the temperature difference between the tank water and the air temperature was greater than when I ran my test. In future I will make an effort to close the sides in more if I have to leave the lid slightly open again!

 

[angiemike6]

Please do not worry about feeding at all for 3/4 days. Even when I am home they only get fed 3 times a week. You do not need to feed them 2/3 times a day, as you will only provide excess food waste which tarnishes the water quality. When I am away on holiday for 2 weeks I get my daughter to come in and feed them once about half way through. I have been keeping tropical fish for 30 years and most of my fish are 10/15 years in age. I recently lost my oldest fish who was 28 years of age. So you can see that sparse feeding did not do them any harm.