Fishless Cycle & ill-timed holiday!

[selhurst sound]

Greetings all

I'm almost to the end of my fishless cycle of my 35L tank and am about to depart on holiday for a week on Saturday. I was just after some advice on how best to keep things ticking over while I'm away. It's a big family holiday so there's no one left behind I would trust to come in a dose ammonia for me!

Over the last few days, the tank has been zeroing out ammonia within 24 hours and nitrite within 48 hours (dosing at 4ppm ammonia). In the last 24 hours, the tank successfully zeroed ammonia & nitrite after dosing to 2ppm.

I've seen a few theories on what to do for a week - fish food in a bag, frozen shrimp, overdose of ammonia, etc, but was after some expert advice. Being so near to the end of the cycle I don't want to blow it now!

Thanks in advance!

 

[librarygirl]

A week shouldn't be long enough to kill off the bacteria, but i don't know for sure. You could dose to 4-5 (no higher), add a pinch of ground up fish food and restart daily dosing when you get back. It's possible the bacteria might take a slight hit, but nothing that shouldn't correct itself in a few day when you get back.

 

[jetajockey]

It's not going to kill off the colony or anything, it'll be fine. At worst you might have a slight hiccup when you start dosing again. Bacteria are very resilient though, think about it, we often tell people that fish are fine for over a week without food, why would bacteria be any different?

 

[Bearchumjs]

My sister was to to drop a raw shrimp in her tank when she went on vacation for a week. She forgot, when she came back she dosed a little ammonia and things were fine. So you could do nothing, or throw in a shrimp (in some pantyhose so you can remove it easily).

 

[selhurst sound]

Thanks all. The consistent message I'm getting is that it's unlikely to go too horribly wrong, which is just what I wanted to hear!