What do you do for Tanksitters

[Pneumatic_Addict]

Your problem was not the prep... your problem was the density of the tank sitter's mind... ‍

Reminds me of this lol.

 

[Charles Zinn]

How far out does WWC service? They might be an option

That would be a min 5 hour service call...a very expensive option if at all.

 

[Charles Zinn]

That would be a min 5 hour service call...a very expensive option if at all.

What about the coral farms out of Plant City or Tampa area

 

[SPS2020]

If I could get my Anthias to eat pellets this would work great.

We have 3 dogs so someone always stays at the house. Would be nice to just say “hands off” when it comes to the tank(s)

FWIW, my anthias LOVE Hikari S pellets.

 

[Charles Zinn]

I'm going to be gone all of June and already stressing about this! I was gone 10 days and came home to entire tank dead in September. I'm in Prescott AZ. I've been trying to find other reefers near me with no luck.

Any local universities nearby check with marine biology dept?

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

I don’t use a Tank Sitter after a lot of my live stock had a “Mystery Die Off.” Anything that died was supposed to be put in water and put in freezer. Amazing thing is nothing was in Freezer and he never let me see his Aquarium. Clean my ATO Probe and Double up on the RO/DI water available. Also I have these.

 

[Dave-T]

If I could get my Anthias to eat pellets this would work great.

We have 3 dogs so someone always stays at the house. Would be nice to just say “hands off” when it comes to the tank(s)

FWIW, I feed freeze dried plankton using the plank auto feeder. Anthias love it. I actually don’t thaw frozen food. Just pop the frozen cubes in the tank, seems to work fine. The plank auto feeder is great for frozen also. You can put a piece of frozen into the plank pump tube, and the thawed food shoots out below.

 

[kevgib67]

Our dog sitter is my tank sitter, I go over everything and prepare the food portions ahead of time. They are half of what I usually feed and I stress not to feed more no matter how much they beg and complain about starvation. I figure if she falls for there act they are only getting about what they usually get. I stress her to call if anything looks slightly off and ask for periodic pics for me to evaluate.

 

[eqbal9947]

I label the FUG out of everything, write instructions as if it was a toddler reading it and keep my QT and DT in separate rooms.
EDIT: I also bought a wifi camera and get them to turn it on if theyre unsure about something.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I disagree with your review of your comment, Rick.

 

[bigbugoutfitters]

Getting back home next Wednesday after 4 weeks of hunting central mt. My tank is hands off for sure, biggest thing is not overfeeding/underfeeding my eel. Have my 11 year old neighbor watching over it. Last i heard a couple days ago. Ill let you know if everything is dead!

 

[leon.1980]

What I would do is set up your food in small condiment cups with lids. I defrost my food in batches for a week supply.

Make up your food and then dose out what you normally feed into individual containers. Simply feed a container at each feeding and done.

I did this just two weeks ago for a weekend trip. They forgot to feed them at all.
I will be setting up a frozen feeder, a camera on the tank and setup emergency services with a lfs in the future.

 

[damsels are not mean]

I have just stuck with keeping stocking low so fish don't need much (if any) food beyond what the reef provides them. Keeping evaporation low with a lid. I let the glass get dirty as lots of copepods live in that biofilm. Avoiding changing anything before a trip. Hope for the best. Works for at least a week.

If I needed longer I'd have somebody come over and top off the tank and feed the fish but that's not hard to do. I would say don't QT fish when you have a vacation planned, seems like just asking for disaster...? QT is a complicated and hands-on process, you can't really do it correctly away from home.

 

[Roli's Reef Ranch]

Afternoon all,

Just curious what everyone does for tanksitters while you’re out of town. I’ve had some horrible results lately:

Vacation 1:
Came back to Ich in my DT. Turns out our friend was using the water from the QT tanks to thaw food. Rip apart DT, Fallow, etc.

Vacation 2:
Same friend from #1 forgot to feed my second QT for two days. Didn’t notice the fish because of their size. Lost 3x Tiny Juvi Lemarks and a Biota Regal.
….Honestly she’s my girl’s friend. Disowning wouldn’t be too difficult…..

Vacation 3:
Different friend, same result as Vacation 1. Apparently I didn’t stress it enough. Just found out today. I’ll have time in about 2 weeks to tear everything apart. Again.
Can’t wait……..

So I’m 0-3. Any ideas? I’m in the Bay Area if anyone knows of an LFS that offers tanksitting.

You should try to reach out to the reefing community there and try to make some friends. If that doesn't work, see if you can get a tank maintenance company to check in on it and be on call if there's an emergency.

 

[bigbugoutfitters]

Update: after three weeks of having an 11 year old watch my tank, i had one fatality, a small clown in my wifes biocube which likely was due to aggression.
something i wish i could have taught her to do would have been little things, like flipping over the corals that my urchins flip over and wiping algea off of gorgonians. Dont think there is anything past saving but its a learning moment.