Never been more worried...

[Punkymom]

Hi ya'll long time no chat...anyway...I'm going on vacation tomorrow through Wednesday and I'm really worried about trusting the care of my fish and plants to the neighbor boy. He's not going to feed them, they're going to fast for the couple of days (really it'll only be Sunday through Tuesday and they'll be fed Wednesday night when I get back). But I don't have a timer for the lights (live plants, ya know) and so I've hired the boy next door to take care of all my animals including turning the tank lights on and off every day. But I'm freaking out thinking what if he forgets to turn them on? Or what's worse? What if he forgets to turn them off??? I don't want to come home to either senerio...dead plants or over growing algae...EEEEEK. I guess I just need some words of comfort...or some advise even...I know my fish will be fine. I fast them once a week anyway...although sometimes by mistake...I plan on feeding them very well today and then tomorrow morning before I leave...I'm so scared...I've never left my fish on vacation before and I wanted to buy a timer, but never had the chance because I don't have a car and I have to go to work as soon as my mom gets home from work so there's no time to go and buy one. Oh the misery...

 

[snapcrackler]

You could grab a plugin timer from Wal Mart and plug it into your lights, and drop in a dissolving vacation feeder. Viola, the self-sufficient tank (until Wednesday anyway)

Then tell your neighbor "YOU NO TOUCHA MY TANK"


HTH

EDITED oops my bad... I just read the part about not being able to buy a timer

Well I think if he forgets once or twice the plants will just think it's really overcast.

 

[ferret]

Just leave the lights off. The plants should be okay for 5 days. My tank isn't heavily planted but somewhat is.. Its on its 5th day of 'no light' in order to kill an algae bloom. I flicked them on lastnight just to check and everything was fine.

 

[ferret]

Oh, and don't use the dissolving vacation food things. Very bad. BAD! They just add a lot of nutriets to your tank, and again you're back to the algae thing.

 

[Sinuhe]

For how long will you be gone? If only for a few days, you can just leave the lights off, just like ferret says. I have live plants in all my tanks, and recently had to keep the lights off for several days (apart from turning them on shortly every day to check on things) to beat cyanobacteria, and the plants did fine.

The timers are not expensive, and you should be able to find them from most super market kind of places.

 

[RogerMcAllen]

Make sure you hide your fish food, this should help keep him from "trying to help the hungry fish".

 

[grimlock3000]

I fully agree with Roger. Leave directions to specifically NOT feed the fish and then hide all the food anyway. People think they are trying to be nice and put in a "little" bit of food which is actually more like 14 days worth of food. People have even found ways to screw up when the fisk owners have put food into cups and labeled one cup per day of the week.

 

[Punkymom]

Sorry I couldn't get on here sooner. I left specific instructions about the lights and the reason they needed turned on. I think I may have scared him a little. But he's a good kid and my tank did fine. I didn't have to hide the food, I store it in the closet anyway so I didn't even worry about that. He did a good job. I paid the kid $10 for taking care of all my creatures. I'll be calling him the next time I go on vacation. Or I might just do the leave the lights off thing. I just was freaking out is all.

 

[Sati]

I left my fish without the lights (cept a touch of natural light of course) and they did fine over Thanksgiving. I'm glad everything worked out well.