What's the longest amount of time you've been away from your Reef Tank?

Vette67

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I had to go to Poland for 5 weeks back in 2018 for work. I had a 150 gallon hospital tank set up that my son had to keep manually topped off. ATO is only hooked up to the display tank. All of my fish were in that hospital tank. I had an auto feeder on it, and everything survived. Probably should have done a water change or 2 in that time, but it wasn't possible, and probably would have been more than my 15 year old son could have handled. I also had a friend that was into reefing years ago stop by once a week to check on things. So I had enough eyes on it to make sure there were no emergencies. The tank is still running and the fish survived, so it was a success. I hope I won't have to repeat that again any time soon.
 

ca1ore

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9 days (Saturday to Sunday). I always felt having a non-reefer 'look after' your tank is just asking for trouble.
 

Paleozoic_reefer

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starting a four day vacation with the family this weekend. So to prep I bought an extra wifi camera (one for tank and sump) and have some fellow reefers on standby just in case something happens (and it always does anyways...). I also have been feeding more over the past week so I don't have to worry about over feeding.
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ChrisP

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I've had to leave my little 5 gallon nano for two months so far. We had a drain break and putting the house back together seems to be taking a long time. I stop by and tend to it once a week and do have an ATO. It seems to be doing as well or better than when I had my hands in it most every day!
 

Neros503

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The longest I've been away from my tank is when there was a forest fire near our house and we had to leave the fish and evacuate. It was around a month+ and ato failed sometime, as well as a huge algae outbreak. Luckily the fish are all fine and the only thing I lost was a turbo snail.
 

wsoldier

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Seems like the one thing that can't be automated is cleaning the algae film off the glass, especially if you're monitoring the tank remotely with a cam. Need to find a way to remote control the glass scrapper.
 

mdb_talon

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I ended up in the hospital for about 3 weeks a few years ago (unplanned). Had ato and some dosing pumps but was only a few days worth. I was not in any condition to even think about my tanks. Fortunately when the tank started blowing bubbles my wife called the LFS and they took care of it for me until I was out. Ended up selling everything because i still was not in a position to care for it for quite awhile, but was very nice to at least be able to get some money for it all rather than lose everything.
 

bg2311

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3 days (about 8 hour drive away). This was with an automatic fish feeder and ATO but before we had an Apex.

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Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

  • Ball valves.

    Votes: 44 48.9%
  • Gate valves.

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  • Check valves.

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  • None.

    Votes: 23 25.6%
  • Other.

    Votes: 9 10.0%
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