Successful Vacation!

[blakeoe]

I am pleased to announce I just got back from a 6-day vacation and everything was fine! I had no fish loss and all water parameters were fine. I used a $10 auto fish feeder purchased from walmart and modified it to give larger doses each feeding, and a timer from lowes for my lights. My mother in law came by once to check on the apartment and i left her pre measured food to simply drop into the aquarium and instructions on how to check the temperature, and filter intake. I did a 35% water change the day before i left, and returned to a super clear healthy tank with not one death! I even brought back some rocks i found near the campus that i am going to sterilize and replace my old ones with. Before i left i dropped in a few more aponegenton bulbs and they are already a few inches tall and competing with my older ones. Im so happy i just thought i'd share.

[Shaggy]

Thats is awesome to hear. I hope I'm that lucky on my next vaction. Can we see some of your tank pics?

[fish_doc]

What model feeder did you buy? Ive been intrested in them but havent gotten the urge to buy one yet.

[blakeoe]

I bought the "daily double" from Penn Plax (only b/c it's the only thing walmart had and there's no petsmart close to me) I had to crush the flakes up allot and mod the food intake to get a larger amount of food but other than that it worked fine.
Shaggy: Here's a pic i took today (before the new rocks)
**BAD PIC! CAMERA PHONE! SORRY!!**

[fishfreaks]

congratulations! i can only hope that were that lucky on our next vacation also. i like your tank, very nice, what fish do you have in there ?? it looks like a 55 gallon

[blakeoe]

Yep 55 gallon. I have 2 angels, 2 clown loaches,1 something like angelic loach, 1 rainbow, 1 upsidedown catfish, 3 sharks, and 2 red claw crabs.

[fishfreaks]

nice, how big is your catfish?

[margo]

That's wonderful news, Blake. I commend you on your responsible fishkeeping.

[MyraVan]

My holiday story went a little different... We spent Christmas with hubby's parents. I bought a rather expensive automatic fishfeeder, and tried it out. It worked fine. Day we left, I cleaned it up a bit, filled with 9 days of food, and put it on the tank.

No one checked the tank or house while we were gone. Came back, fish all fine, but none of the food had gone into the tank! I had assembled it incorrectly after cleaning, so all the food that I'd carefully measured out was stilll there in the feeder! Fish were hungry, but fine. So I have firsthand experience that fish can go quite a while without feeding, so I don't sweat it if I can't feed them when we're away for a weekend.

For our spring holiday we had a friend staying at our place, and he fed the fish, so they got well treated...

[Lexus]

Glad to hear everyone was ok!