Okay, I've searched all over the internet, and found many answers, but I trust everyone on here the most. I'll be leaving on a 10 day vacation next Friday, and I'm curious what I should do about my cichlids. I'd rather not trust anyone to feed them, and lots of places on the internet are telling me cichlids will be fine without being fed for that long since females can hold for up to a month without eating. I currently have a 55g with some sp44s and purple acei's, another 55 with 4 blue moorii about an inch long(waiting for a 135g to be set up) and a 20g with a holding sp44 female in it. Do you think they'll be okay if I do a 50% water change the day before we leave and give them a good feeding? Thanks everyone!
Going on vacation for 9 days....
- Thread starter cmjdjm1
- Start date
Hello; About your concerns regarding being away for a trip. Well fed fish have gone for up to five days or more while I was away without aproblem on a few occasions. Three day weekends many times. If I know ahead of time, I do a water change and a slightly heavier feeding. My biggest problem was when a friend decided to help me out by feeding the tanks when I was away unexpectedly. He overfed and fouled the water.
I had to be away for a job one year and could only be home on weekends. I used an automatic feeder that mounted on the rim of a tank. They use AA batteries and good batteries will last much more than a month. You should probably set one up several days in advance of leaving so you can trouble shoot problems and adjust feeding amounts. Also some foods do not feed properly in these, so you should let them run for a few days while you are around. The feeder I use feeds twice aday. It was dumpling most of the food onto the cover when I first set it up. I also found it better to keep it away from any source of spray or water mist, as the food would tend to clump.
If tank conditions are stable and normal, you should be ableto let the water changes go for a while as well. I go a week or two between changes now and have been on a longer cycle in the past. I tend to keep a lot of live plants and feed lightly, which may help. I was on a monthly water change cycle in the past and kept this up for many years without notable problems. Not a clear difference of fish loses or disease problems from then and the lower stocking and more frequent water changes that I use currently. I stepped up my water change frequency more as a cushion than a necessity. Now, if something comes up to postpone a water change, it is less of an issue.
I had to be away for a job one year and could only be home on weekends. I used an automatic feeder that mounted on the rim of a tank. They use AA batteries and good batteries will last much more than a month. You should probably set one up several days in advance of leaving so you can trouble shoot problems and adjust feeding amounts. Also some foods do not feed properly in these, so you should let them run for a few days while you are around. The feeder I use feeds twice aday. It was dumpling most of the food onto the cover when I first set it up. I also found it better to keep it away from any source of spray or water mist, as the food would tend to clump.
If tank conditions are stable and normal, you should be ableto let the water changes go for a while as well. I go a week or two between changes now and have been on a longer cycle in the past. I tend to keep a lot of live plants and feed lightly, which may help. I was on a monthly water change cycle in the past and kept this up for many years without notable problems. Not a clear difference of fish loses or disease problems from then and the lower stocking and more frequent water changes that I use currently. I stepped up my water change frequency more as a cushion than a necessity. Now, if something comes up to postpone a water change, it is less of an issue.
I'm leaving tomorrow for 11 days. I have 7 tanks set up and I don't trust the auto feeders and I have a fish that have picky diets. To take care of my fish, I've trained my girlfriend on how to feed the different tanks. I hope it works, LOL.
Hello; Congrats rideit 6578 on having a trained girlfriend. I understand about special food. The auto feeders do work well with dry foods of various types ( best with flake types in my experience.). I used them for well over a year with good results. At one stretch I was away for just over three weeks. Timers on lights. All my fish and plants made it just fine.
Okay, I think I'm going to get my parents to stop by and feed them for me. I'm going to divide the food up into ziploc bags for each day for each tank. I can't imagine them screwing anything up that way. We rarely go anywhere, so it doesnt make much sense spending the money on automatic feeders. Thanks for the help everyone!
been there and done that, lol. feed them before you leave and separate the ones you don't trust alone(for example the ones that gets bullied or the bulliers )
Well, my mom SWORE to me she wasn't an idiot and I wouldn't need to divide the food up into daily bags. Boy was she wrong. I came back to so much food in the tanks that it was growing mold or something on it, and one filter was so plugged with food that it had stopped running. Thankfully no dead fish, and I did massive water changes within minutes of walking in the door. Thankfully it didn't push the tanks into a cycle or anything. So for anyone else going away.... Daily bags!!
