Going on Vacation?

I am planning to leave on an 8-day vacation to see my parents in Oregon. In the past, long trips have always been disasterous for my fish. I have usually been able to get someone to come over, but they either over-feed the fish, or they forget then overcompensate by over-over feeding... Every vacation I have come home to find 2 or three fish were missing. One vacation I lost five. That was in the early days.

So today I thought I'd talk a little about feeding and vacations, and tell some of the things I've tried that work. I've tried a lot of things and gotten advice from lots of places, so let me go through the options one by one (presented in order of worst to best):

• Weekend feeders. These are little things made of plaster of paris and they have food mixed in. They dissolve over time and your fish swim by and pick the food off. Man, they make a mess. Use these if you want, but you should definately do a water-change when you get back.
• Sinking pellets. These work better. They will accumulate a layer of mold on them, but the fish seem to be able to pick around the mold. You'll have to clean up a little mess when you get back, but it's not bad.
• Hire a kid from your neighborhood. It's a risk, especially if they don't have an aquarium at their home. kids forget, too--remember that. Then they feel guilty and over-feed.
• Ask an adult friend. If they don't have an aquarium of their own they are about as bad as a kid. If they do have an aquarium, you are much better off, but remember, people forget.
• Just let your fish go hungry. This works for two or three days. That's what I find the most reliable--sorry to say. It's the least hassle and works the best for 2-3 day vacations.
• Automatic mechanical feeder. You can get really expensive ones and really cheap ones. All of them allow you to adjust the amount of food that gets dispensed. These work with dry food only (no frozen food)!

So I went out and bought a couple mechanical feeders. The expensive one has a programmable clock, and I can set it to dispense up to eight times a day. It works really well. I bought another one that only cost $12.00. It just dispenses every 12 hours.

My programmable automatic feeder

Both of these feeders work by a rotating drum that has a hole in one end. There is a sliding door that allows you to adjust the size of the hole. The important thing to remember is that you should experiment. Don't just pop in the batteries and program your device, and take off for a week. Make sure you do a couple of practice runs so you can be there when things go wrong. You want to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Here's one final piece of advice that has nothing to do with feedings, but is farily relevant to vacations. If the weather outside is cold, be cautious about turning your thermostat down too low. I went on a week-long Christmas vacation in 2005. I got a friend who was very experienced with aquariums to feed my fish. She came over one day and the house was very cold. All my fish were grouped in a tight little school around the heater and the water temp was in the low 60s.

Most heaters have a maximum range that they can raise the temperature. The range is always relative to room temperature, and is (I would guess) around 15 degrees. That means if you lower your thermostat to 50 degrees, then your heater will heat your tank to 65 degrees. This is not what you want. You'll have some pretty cold fish. When you buy a heater for your aquarium, try to find out it's maximum range. If it has a range of only +10 then make sure your house thermostat is set no lower than say 65 degrees.