Going out of town for a few nights...

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ccross

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Aug 14, 2011
Messages
792
Location
NY
My wife and I will be going out of town for 2 nights. If I feed my cichlids the day we leave (monday), will they be ok with no food the following day (tuesday)? We will be returning home late in the day wednesday and I would feed them then. I just dont want them starving, lol.
 
Not sure about cichilids, but I went on vacation around Thanksgiving last year for a week. I feed them before I left and my sister in law feed them one time while I was gone. They were all fine when I got back. I will go out on a limb and say one day is not going to hurt them. I read somewhere that fish can usually go a week or so without food.
 
They will be fine. The only time you might have to worry about them starving over night is if there fry.
 
Lol, they will be fine. A holding female goes a month without eating. I skip a day or 2 every now and then so they don't get constipated.
 
I feed every other day as a regular schedule. As mentioned above, fry are the only ones that need food every day.
 
I figured it would be fine but I wanted to be sure. Very attached to my cichlids and would hate to lose one :)
 
ccross said:
I figured it would be fine but I wanted to be sure. Very attached to my cichlids and would hate to lose one :)

How well do those 7 day feeders work? Or do they mess a tank up? I've never used one
 
Although there may be a good one or two out there, the majority will just mess up the tank.
 
All the feeders I've seen are for flake food. My cichlids eat pellets, I dont think I could use a feeder. Not gonna worry about it as they will only be going 1 day without feeding.
 
Yeah, learned that with the ones that dissolve there is no way to control how fast it will and how much food it let's out.
 
I wouldnt worry. They will graze on algae if you have some on your rocks anyway. They wont starve.

As long as they dont decide to eat my Bristlenose Pleco ;)

Or as my 3 year old calls it, my "hippo".
 
I've had an automatic feeder for 2 years. It's never come out of the box cause I'm afraid of something going wrong and dumping too much food in.
 
Dont overfeed when you leave!
Feed them like you would any other day.
Maybe lights off 2 if you dont have plants

Dont touch your filters and stuff anymore also.
I'm always freaking out when im gone for a while that something would start leaking. If its ok now it will be ok in a day or 2.
If you do something wrong now it might not be ok in a day or 2 lol.
 
...will they be ok with no food the following day (tuesday)?...I just dont want them starving...

They will be fine without feeding for that period of time as others have suggested.

Females rift lake african cichlids routinely can go weeks without feeding during their mouthbrooding sessions.
 
I had to go out of time for 3 days and was worried about my tank so I ran to Petsmart just before leaving and picked up one of the auto feeders with a digital timer. Ran home and set it up and left. Came home 3 days later and checked the tank and realized the feeder hadn't run. I missed hitting the go button or something and it was still in programming mode. All the fish were fine though.

Since then I have been using the auto feeder full time. It works perfectly and if it drops a few extra flakes the cories are more than happy to gobble it up.
 
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