Returning From Vacation

Well, I don’t think I lost any fish this time around. Cool! Both of the automatic feeders were totally empty, though, and I have no way of knowing how long the food supply lasted. Maybe I should have had my sister in law check on the containers and refill them. I’ll make a note of that.
Another other thing I learned about automatic feeders is that they don’t work too well with flake food. The flakes seem to get jammed in the opening as the drum spins. As a result, sometimes a little tiny amount gets dumped, and sometimes a great big amount gets dumped. I tried working around this by crunching up the flakes into smaller pieces. That seemed to help.

I also tried a mix of flakes and shrimp pellets. That worked, too—kind of. This is going to require a little more experimentation.

In retrospect, I would advise setting things up a couple weeks in advance and using the feeders to do your normal feedings. That way you can see how long the food lasts, and you can make sure your fish are getting enough. If the food isn’t coming out right, you can try new things. It is nice to eliminate all the guesswork before you are rushing off to wherever.

Now that I am back I think I ought to do a water change. This is probably good advice for anyone returning from vacation. If you used an automatic feeder and you have it set up just right, you are probably okay. However, if you had a friend or a neighbor kid come over, or if you used one of those plaster weekend feeders, you should definitely do a water change. Go through your tank, clean out all the dead fish, remove all the moldy debris, and scrub off all the algae. That should restore the tank to normal.

BTW, I don’t leave the light on when I go on vacation. If you have live plants and you are worried, you might get a light timer, but as long as your aquarium is in a well-lit spot away from direct sunlight, your plants should be fine for a couple days. None of the live plants in my aquarium were affected by the lights being off, and I was away for 8 days.