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Old 31-05-2003, 11:20 PM
Cichlidiot
 
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Default plants after a week of being gone... and next is 2 weeks, need advice

SlimFlem wrote:
snip
Now, in a few days I will be away from my tank for *2* weeks. This I am
worried about. I have a neighbor I am going to ask to feed the fish a few
times during the 2 weeks and to top the tank off for me after about a week.
I also think I will unplug the Magnum 350 while I'm gone so I don't have the
air sucking problem. Acutally, if I put my other half of the glass tops
back on, that should help with the evaporation problem some. How should I
dose PMDD for a 2 week absence? Should I dose extra the few days leading up
to my departure or extra on the day before or what? And what about the CO2
bottles, is there something I can do to keep them producing for 2 weeks? I
currently use 2 cups sugar, 1/2 teaspon of baking soda, and just under 1/2
teaspon of yeast per bottle. I have 2 2 liter bottles injecting into my
Ehiem. Is there any danger of any other harmful gas being produced and put
into the tank after CO2 production slows or the yeast runs out of sugar to
eat?


My fish seemed to be ok after no food for a week, but the big Angelfish and
Clown Loaches seemed like they might have been just a little "slower" than
normal until I fed them. Maybe that was just in my head. I am thinking the
Clowns can eat snails that come out at night and from their digging in the
gravel to sustain them. The tetras and danios I am not really concerned
about. My only real concern is the 2 large Angelfish, 6 Clown Loaches, and
2 Rainbows. What suggestions does anyone have? Would a automatic flake
food feeder cause problems as far as algea is concerned?


A question... How knowledgeable is this neighbor about fish? If the
neighbor is a novice, you might be asking too much with topping off the
tank. You'd also have to worry about the "kill 'em with kindness" syndrome
novices seem to have (too much food). If the neighbor knows their way
around a fish tank, then what about mixing up the "dry ingredients" for
the CO2 recipe in two spare bottles and asking the neighbor to fill them
to a mark with water and switch them with the old bottles after a week? If
the neighbor knows a lot, you could probably also have him/her dose your
PMDD a few times while you're gone. If you ask them all this though, be
sure to offer some sort of compensation and of course write all the
instructions down and post it somewhere obvious (like the wall by the
tank), heh.

Another alternative for feeding at least is an automatic feeder. There's
also automatic dosers for things like adding plant nutrients, but that
wouldn't work if your PMDD mix needs to stay refridgerated (I've never had
large enough tanks to try PMDD, so I don't know if it needs to be kept
refridgerated). My sugar and yeast CO2 mixes can go for 2-3 weeks fine,
although the output does decrease as time wears on. If I'm gone (or very
ill) and don't catch it when it fizzles out, there doesn't seem to be
anything toxic enough produced to negatively affect the fish, although I
don't inject into a filter and injecting into a filter causes a whole
other set of issues to worry about. This is on both my high dose and low
dose CO2 tanks... never had a fish loss from a stale CO2 batch (as I
discovered after being so sick for several weeks where just feeding the
fish every day was a challenge).