10 days away from home

[hockeydude15]

im going to be away from home for 10 days and i dont know what to leave in my 55 gallon cichlid tank. There are 11 cichlids in there and all are pretty much to their max size. What should i leave in there for the 10 days that im away?

 

[rich311k]

I assume you are talking about food. They would be better off not eating for ten days than trying to leave something in the tank for them to eat.

 

[severum mama]

Do you know someone who you could trust to feed them an appropriate amount a couple times while you are gone? They would be fine if they only ate 2 or 3 times. I'd do a demonstration though- my friend really overfed one of my tanks once. 8O

 

[20 20]

Better yet, if you can get someone, put the correct amount for each feeding in a zip lock bag, on top of or by the tank if it's dry food, in the freezer (well marked for them, of course) if it's frozen food. That way, the just open it up and dump it in. No guessing on their part. Want them to feed twice while your gone? Two zip lock bags. Three times? Three zip lock bags.

 

[Bhunsucker]

We just got back from our vacation what I did was I fed them on Saturday am right before we walked out the door. I had my neighbor feed them on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we returned on Sunday.

I went to the dollar store and purchased the round pill boxes that way I could pre measure out all of the food for him to feed to the fish. All he had to do was open the box and dump the food in. It worked great. This way we didnt have to worry about over feeding them.

Good Luck and have a great vacation.

 

[SeaDana]

Has anyone tried those automatic feeders? How do they work?

 

[Toirtis]

Has anyone tried those automatic feeders? How do they work?

The Nutrafin ones work good, but only with pellets...flakes tend to get gummed up in the hopper. Personally, I really don't trust any of them, though....I would much rather have someone drop by and put in some pre-measured, pre-labelled containers of food every 3 days.

 

[kimberly]

The pill box is a great idea! They are cheap and easy to find and it would be easy for a non-fish person to use. I will remember that!

 

[TomK2]

I used the battery operated autofeeders for a two week vacation. They worked. I am sure they can and do fail, but letting someone else into the house freaked my wife out. She wouldn't allow it. Says she would rather worry about the fish than the house. So it was nothing or try the autofeeder. I Used two different kinds bought at petsmart on two different tanks. They were both variations on a rotating drum design. I even used the dissolving pyramid once too. No problems.