Travel Anxiety? Do you have it and how do you remedy it?

Do you have travel anxiety when it comes to your saltwater reef aquarium?

  • Yes

    Votes: 279 53.6%
  • Somewhat

    Votes: 168 32.2%
  • No

    Votes: 68 13.1%
  • Other (please explain)

    Votes: 6 1.2%

  • Total voters
    521

Gogol_frag

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1. Major travel anxiety, two crashes both times. Enough money lost to drive a new car off a cliff for no reason ;Meh

2. Having somebody KNOWLEDGEABLE on standby helps, personally I use a neptune system with trident and a 24/7 camera to keep my eyes on things when I’m out now. Take no chances folks.

3. I went off on a vacation for a month and came back home for a day before having to leave for a business trip within that same day.

Had my ato pump stop working... (kalkwasser+water) the kalkwasser is basically a Ca and alk solution. Anyway I get back the pH is way off the charts because my pumps are spinning air water, (because my ato pump failed) I notice my corals are practically dead, people at home didn’t think anything was wrong... they just heard “weird noises”...... anyway.... So forgetting I had kalkwasser I kick on a new ATO and dump kalkwasser back into my tank. Couple hours later I go back down and BOOM I see everything is even worse, kH and Ca are way off now with the pH skyrocketing now. In a rush I dump vinegar in there to fix the pH because it’s way off AGAIN and in the rush I add too much.... so now my pH has tanked and I can’t get it up (Nice going). I go grab baking soda or powder whichever it was and try forcing that in there.

I couldn’t do a water change because I didn’t have any water and I didn’t have time to sit and wait to make some.

Anyway so I start adding the baking soda/powder I can’t remember which and I can’t raise the pH. Then being that I had a business trip I left promptly thereafter about 3 AM on a 9 hour drive LOL!!! After that while I was away things started to settle more and I had my friend come take all of my half-dead corals out to his frag tank. They did okay in there but most didn’t make it. RIP to all the lives lost ;Blackeye;Dead;Nailbiting;Blackeye

That was the worse of the two... that one was partial user error but it all started with that one pump, which IMO put all the corals and fish down in the first place, I just helped finish the job. And no more kalkwasser.... ever...

encouraging pictures ~>
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Ohh that's a great point. Thanks PBnJ
 

KingTideCorals

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No matter how prepared you are it seems like it never fails that when you're "out of town" something is going to go wrong with your reef tank. It could be a GFCI trips, a pump quits working, a fish quits eating, the ATO runs out of water, it could be so many things. If there's going to be a problem it seems like it's going to happen while you are traveling. Or maybe it's just me? Meh. Let's talk about it today!

1. Do you have travel anxiety when it comes to your saltwater reef aquarium?

2. How do you mitigate problems happening while you're away? What plans or people do you have in place?

3. What's the worse thing to ever happen while you were away?



travel anxiety.jpg
1. Entrusting my Apex System and my amazing fish sitter if I am gone for some time @BighohoReef

2. Second one goes straight to @BighohoReef he is my saving grace while I am away

3. Death. Flood. Broken Seal.... the list goes on LOL
 

LRT

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Lol don't get one. Very addicting. Unplug before you go to work.
Super easy to set up and use. And for the price a pleasant surprise with the video quality. Night time mode isn't to bad either. Highly reccomend. Think you can get a 4 pack for $99 or 1 cam for $25 @ petsmart.
 

Gogol_frag

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The moment you realize you're 12hrs from home, Apex is down and you took your very last Xanax yesterday......

Screaming Macaulay Culkin GIF by Home Alone
I would lose it, even if I was vacationing in Xanax-city if my Apex went out while I was out as well.

... and that's the thing with Apex. That it doesn't provide 100% reliability. I have had it lose connections on me. It's infrequent, but it does happen, and is definitely on the wrong-side of cool.
 

Gogol_frag

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Lol don't get one. Very addicting. Unplug before you go to work.
Super easy to set up and use. And for the price a pleasant surprise with the video quality. Night time mode isn't to bad either. Highly reccomend. Think you can get a 4 pack for $99 or 1 cam for $25 @ petsmart.
10-4 LRT!
 

TISLE

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A way that I give to my tank sitter some ease along with not having to deal with at least over feeding issues is go to the local pharmacy and pick up some weekly medicine containers. Alot the amount of either dry or frozen per day. That way you dont deal with those headaches of someone feeding way too much while youre gone.

Other than that I seriously put some trust in my Apex.
 

galantra

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I am currently out of the US now and wow I am pretty stressed out over day one.

In preparation before leaving 1) I actually had the skimmer cup to decide to overfill and flooded the bottom of the stand.
2)Ato decided to overfill second tank. 3)Automatic feeders never arrived. So now I have to use someone to come over and feed my tanks
4) dosing tubing got clogged up.

So I am pretty worried now
 

maxpare79

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Well I started this project during the pandemic, so I haven't experienced any period away, but what worries me when time will come is that my orange back fairy wrasse won't touch pellets. So either he changes his mind or he will die of starvation during my next travel.

My family lives too far away to come feed it on a daily basis and I don't really trust any neighbours to do it correctly so....
 

brahm

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yup no matter what I do. It's one of the main reasons why after I had to tear down my last setup and my job started requiring me to travel more I waited so many years to set up another tank. (I also was enjoying traveling without worrying). On the flip side, I swear whenever I leave I come back to my tank better than I left it overall.

I have an apex, ATO, auto feeder, carx controller by the APEX, everything to where the tank should run fine for weeks on it's on but...it's always in the back of your head.

I try to link up with other reefers in the community and we watch each other's tank when we go out of town, but I personally only like to do that if I have to leave town. for example, right now I would typically be out camping (when I didn't have my tank) and going on 2 weeks or so mountain bike trip, and I feel guilty asking someone else to look after my tank as it's an elective responsibility of my choice so I've been procrastinating and making excuses to myself not to go. If something goes wrong I have a hard time being OK with putting that burden on someone else.

The big thing for me now is I moved to an area where Power safety shut-offs are frequent this time of year I did add some battery backups to the tank and have a generator the requires manual flip over, at some point, I'd like to get a battery wall so it's seamless, also now that I'm in lower elevation heat can be an issue so if the power goes out and it's hot I may have a new set of problems that I didn't have to deal with before. Waiting for our first "hot days" to see if the fans and swamp cooler will be enough.
 
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Emerson

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I think we all have a little travel anxiety if you care for your fish and coral, never mind the possibility of water damage, electrical fire, the list goes on.

Anyway, I said "Somewhat." I travel a lot with work and use APEX to monitor and correct most things as well as a web cam. When it's just me gone, my wife is the back up. When the whole family is gone, it's web cam and a neighbor who will come by at the two week point or as required to check on the ATO reservoir (Brute 20 gal).

One time while gone the Salinity was showing all out of wack. My wife was home and able to call LFS for a service call. Turned out to be bubbles in the probe. Only time that's ever happened, and that was four years ago.
 

Amanda85

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Ugh...we went on a spring break trip several states away and I thought I had everything squared away—someone was even going to be at the house daily to feed the fish and take care of the cat and dog while we were going to be away for the week. Well, the third day into the trip I get a call from the person house sitting saying they came over that evening and the HOB skimmer had pumped a third of the tank water out onto the floor and conveniently down into the basement. (65 gallon tank, but with rock and stuff, it was about 12 gallons total that got pumped out before the level of the tank water reached the depth of the skimmer intake pump). I got this call around 8pm. She of course knew nothing about fish tanks other than what I had instructed her for basic care while we were away—topping off water daily, and feeding daily. And I could have/should have kicked myself for not making up a water change amount (10 gal) and having it just there for an emergency, because I had to try and walk her thru siphoning water from my RO/DI 30 gal storage with tubing into each 5 gal bucket, mixing saltwater, and then adding it in without destroying coral, all via phone. Right before she had called me she had frantically dumped ALL of the 5 single-gal milk jugs of STRAIGHT RO/DI water I left for top off purposes into the tank (arg!!!!!) because the HOB skimmer and two pumps were running dry and she didn’t think to just unplug things. Haha. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall watching her try to siphon water from the big storage tank because it was all I could do to not be in tears laughing as she gagged and retched while she choked on water as she was trying to get the flow going. (I ended up having her go to our neighbor to have him help). I didn’t even bother having her try to check the salinity....it was bound to be jacked. And not knowing what had caused the issue, I sure as heck wasn’t going to run the skimmer again....so, my tank sat for 4 days unskimmed. Luckily, everything lived, but it’s been since the end of March and I’m now suffering with a red slime/cyano/? outbreak that I just can’t get to slow down! I’ve done at least 4 water changes since then. My nitrates are 0, ph perfect, salinity back where it needs to be...but I’m not sure what to do. Maybe turn lights off a couple days? I’ve got a couple new acros and zoas I don’t want to stress out too much tho.

All in all, I learned a lot about going away and tank care. I also installed some WiFi leak detectors at the tank and everywhere else in the house. Trying to deal with flooding and cleanup remotely is terrible!
 

monkeyCmonkeyDo

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I have anxiety about everything. I am just a worrysome person.
I didnt set up my 300+gal system just cuz i want to take a vacation sometime soon hopefully eventually if the masks fall.
Ato. Fish feeder. Fish sitter. I think its doable. Even for a worry bee like me.
D
 

Labora

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1) Only somewhat but that would be for any pet left at home unattended for long periods of time.

2) I have someone that can come check on it if need be. I also use the Amazon Cloud Cam, ATO, and Auto-Feeder so with this combination it's really easy. I can see the water level with Cloud Cam so if ATO stops working etc.. I can call a family member. I can also hear sounds through cam so if the pump is doing something weird I could tell.

Regular Xanax use makes your anxiety worse in the long run so they are good for emergencies only (too addictive and tolerance building).
 

ultraArcite

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1. Do you have travel anxiety when it comes to your saltwater reef aquarium?
Heck yeah, I have anxiety with my cats when I travel too.

2. How do you mitigate problems happening while you're away? What plans or people do you have in place?
Rely on friends to check on the tanks daily and use webcams to monitor them.

3. What's the worse thing to ever happen while you were away?
My betta died :( (I haven't traveled since getting a reef tank)
 

Kingston

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I set up my tank just before COVID hit so I haven't had to travel yet. I managed to talk my family out of going to Orlando for spring break this year but I don't think I can get out of summer vacation.
I have a copperband butterfly that eats only frozen food, so I can't use an autofeeder for pellets and I don't have an Apex either. So I am going to be supper anxious when the time comes to travel.
 

Young@Heart

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Well lets see, been awhile since COVID, but I do the following:
Make Sure the ATO is topped off with Water the night before I leave.
Make Sure The corals are fed (I direct Feed them) the day before I leave.
Make Sure the Fish have a frozen feed the day before I leave (everybody in the reef loves frozen feed day).
Clean the Protein Skimmer the day before.
Test shutdown of pump the day before - let water drain into sump - see where it stops.
Make Sure I locate and put together my auto feeders for all 3 tanks, Fill, Mount and Set them (Batteries Inc.)
Make sure I will be back within 5-6 days. I figure my evap. rate. So my ATO rules my vacation length.
Check the UPS the night before.
Change the Socks the day before.
Check the Sump to make sure the water is at the right level.
Say a silent prayer.

Having said that, most of my trips are limited because of Dosing and ATO.
 
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A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 73 37.6%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 66 34.0%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 12.9%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 28 14.4%
  • Other.

    Votes: 2 1.0%
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