Poll: What is the longest your tank has gone unattended?

[dbl]

Starting to see more and more "I'm going on vacation, what do I do" type threads. It got me wondering how long folks have ever gone away and left their tanks unattended. For me personally, I had a 10 day stint and came back to find everything perfectly fine, with the exception of some dirty glass!

With the proper preparation, it is possible to be able to walk away and enjoy a vacation and not worry about the tank. Well, maybe worry but not obsess. I wrote an article on this topic some time ago that between the information and the responses, covers the vast majority of planning.

So, how long have you gone away without having the tank looked in on?

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Where is the less than 12 hours vote?

;Cyclops

 

[dbl]

Where is the less than 12 hours vote?

;Cyclops

It's there now!

 

[CindyKz]

I've been fortunate that our adult daughter lives with us and was willing to learn the very basics (how to feed, how to change filter socks, and most importantly when it's time for a video call).

The bummer is that she won't be living with us for our next vacay. I'm pretty sure she'll still stop in every couple days for me. Fortunately I have most things automated, just need to buy the auto feeder and see if the fish do ok with just pellets (they should).

I'll still be a stressed out mess LOL.

 

[Breadman03]

The longest was a 15 day road trip from PA to CA. The only thing I did was ran a RO line to the top of the basement stairs so my cat sitter could turn on my RODI for a day in the middle of my trip. Too bad it loosened my ATO float switches and I realized it after a day of driving. And by a day, I mean we left at 2 AM and did 70ish for about 20 hours with a pit stop with @Nina51 for a BBQ. A few minutes recoding my Apex got the ATO running with my conductivity probe, though I peeked in on my daily usage to make sure it was near normal values.

Everything was fine when we got back, with the exception that my glass was opaque with algae.

 

[DancingShark]

I am currently in a vacation in Florida. 9 days total. I have my dogsitter just feed and top off my nano. If I want her to do something I will guide her through video chat.

On a side note yesterday I stopped in at wwc and was just blown away at their big display tank. I have never seen a tank like that. Wow.

 

[LMDAVE]

I'll be going on my first 5 day trip next month. My ATO (w/Kalk) should sustain that time, and I have a battery operated auto feeder with marine flakes in it for those days (most of my fish loves the flakes with the exception of my royal gramma). I plan to do a hefty frozen feeding (ROD's) before leaving. I expect to see a pretty dirty glass given what I saw from from just a 2 day trip, but hopefully that's the extent of it.

 

[dylana407]

8 days. No ATO. Do 50% WC the day before. Clean filter socks. Salinity at 1.025. Reduce light period to 8 hours. Reduce feeding by 50%.

 

[Tuffyyyyy]

I've left town a few times for a week this year. I've been relatively lucky over the years when I go out of town, and have slowly learned the value of redundancy. Do water change 2 days before, not day of. Then you'll be able to do a less frantic check to make sure you switched everything back on. I don't have an APEX but do have ATO, Eheim feeder and a battery powered bubbler. These let me feel pretty good about leaving. I've also got a nest cam across the room that at least lets me see pixels of (what I assume are) my fish moving.

 

[Sleepydoc]

Just got back from a 1 week family vacation that included my parents (my typical tank sitters.) All went fine except I had turned on half of the lights on override the morning we left to do some maintenance and forgot to turn them off so I have a bit of an algae bloom. Oops! :O

In the winter when the air is bone dry I go through over a gallon of top off water a day, so my 10 gallon ATO reservoir barely lasts a week. If I want to leave for longer than that I’d have to rig something else.

This is where a controller is really nice. Not only for the automation but for the ability to check on things remotely and to respond to things that may go wrong while you’re away.

 

[Rispa]

I have birds as well neither household hours unattended for more than a day if that

 

[brandon429]

Any reefbowl with inner diameter fitting lid will run 7-10 days before topoff not as a one off, but the whole time it runs. No ATO to fail, evap restriction. YouTube refer Tyler Johnson made multiple ones that ran closer to a month before topoff and rented them to dentists and medical facilities around his town... using small power heads with low air flow vs full air driven.

Ironic aspect of pico reefs...they beat 300 gallon systems in terms of salinity stability by using only a plastic dish as a lid. Large tanks get all the fun fish

 

[Zeal]

Ill be going on a 14 day vacation to the north east later this month. Im making 14 baggies of food for my cousin to feed daily in the morning and ill be doing a thorough cleaning the day before and my weekly water change. Ill probably remove the filter pads but not sure yet. I can have my mom come and change maybe every 4 days or so. Im leaving everything cut and set up in my room.

Ill be buying a webcam to set it up infront of my tank just incase.

All in all im not too worried about it. I havent ran into ANY issues with my tank, so im pretty chill about leaving it alone for 2 weeks.

 

[Radman73]

Left mine alone for about 4-5 weeks. 60 cube, only 3 fish and a few paly heads. 32 gallon Brute for ATO and an Eheim auto feeder. Rigged an old iPhone to be able to view it whenever I wanted so I could at least verify that it was dumping in food when it was supposed to. Overall, it turned out well. Stressful though. Was when we were between houses in Atlanta and Orlando.

 

[Sleepydoc]

More than “what is the longest time you’ve left your tank,” I’m more interested in seeing how people manage and maintain their tanks when they’re gone, specifically feeding. The only good option I know of is an automatic feeder with pellets, but that’s not a great solution for all livestock.

 

[Grimm_Medic]

Planning on leaving both my tanks for 5 days for macna this year. Keep posting your experiences as this is my first time leaving two tanks for that long.

 

[fish farmer]

On my first reef years ago I would leave for maybe 3 to 4 days. I had a manual ATO and/or kalk dripper. I can look back in my notebook and see the comments,"doser didn't drip" "sump pump shut down". I never lost anything, but it was mostly softies and a fish or two.

My second tank I did have a sitter....but no A/C. I was away for a week enjoying the hot weather at the beach(99 degrees on Cape Cod). It was a three day heat wave....my tank got cooked. The sitter said that things were looking bad on day 2....the real bummer was I was bringing back an A/C unit from my folks house.

Now we have cats and a dog. If we go camping with the dog we'll go away for a couple of days, but any longer we get a sitter. This past weekend we went away for two nights and had a sitter who stays at our house. I installed an A/C on Wednesday and had it running on Friday. I had the house at 80 degrees and it is still 80, actually dipped down to 79 degrees last night. The tank hasn't got much over 79 with two fans running on it. Today it is supposed to hit 97 degrees and be as thick as soup.

 

[Kactai]

I work an out of town job. I'm away from home for 8 days and home for 6 days.

My girlfriend feeds and that is it. Well I mean she has helped with QT and emergencies but feeding is pretty much her only job on the home tank.

We have a doser, an ATO and everything on smart power bars that I can access from the road. We live in northern Canada and the tank is in the basement which always stays relatively cool so I'm never too worried about heat.

When we go on vacation it's usually for a week or two and we get someone to stop by and make sure the auto feeder and ATO reservoir are topped off. Otherwise there is not much to do.

 

[dylana407]

The thread is for UNATTENDED guys. If your dog, cat or birds are feeding your fish, I would consider that attended as well.

 

[Radman73]

More than “what is the longest time you’ve left your tank,” I’m more interested in seeing how people manage and maintain their tanks when they’re gone, specifically feeding. The only good option I know of is an automatic feeder with pellets, but that’s not a great solution for all livestock.

I know have a "Reefscicle" that I've used once. The problem is that it drips food so slowly it allows the dominant fish to get all the food. I think it'll be better when used with flake/pellet dropped periodically, having more than one on a large tank, concentrating the food so it all drips out fairly quickly, or dripping it into a return section where it can be broadcast fed or goes to a more random location. Unfortunately, I can't use the return section as it also feeds my refugium where I have no fish.