Fish Care For The Vacationing

Fish Care For The Vacationing

Caring for Your Fish While Away

Imagine returning home from a fabulous two-week vacation only to find all of your prized fish dead and the aquarium you have been maintaining so rigorously a total disaster.

It¹s probably not so hard to imagine for many of you that have kept fish for any period of time. In fact, it is likely this has happened to you at least once. But we canĄ¯t stay home and keep constant vigil over the aquarium ¨C we all need a vacation once in a while. Fortunately, there are some alternatives that will allow you to enjoy your much-deserved time off and have piece of mind that your fish and aquarium are reasonably safe.

The biggest mistake most people make is that they ask a friend, neighbor or relative to come in and take care of their fish. This may be fine if the person has fish experience and some knowledge of aquarium care. Unfortunately, many do not, and they end up killing your fish with kindness by overfeeding them, figuring if a little food is good then more must be better. Little do they realize that they are overwhelming the nitrogen cycle and causing a build-up of toxic by-products that might ultimately kill your fish.

Several alternatives are available to the home aquarist to deal with just this problem:

Automatic feeders. These are a good way to take care of your fish care while you are away on vacation by feeding your fish at appropriate intervals with a pre-measured amount of food. There are some drawbacks to these feeders.

They require electricity to work. In the case of a power outage or if their batteries go dead they will not work at all.

If you will be gone longer than the number of food chambers on your feeder you will have to have someone come in and refill it, which offers the possibility that the person may add too much food or accidentally change the settings on the feeder.

Many of these feeders require manual calibration, which can lead to problems if they are accidentally miss-set.

When the Power Goes Out

There are other things to consider when leaving your aquarium while taking a vacation. If the power were to go out for an extended period of time your tank would gradually become depleted of oxygen. For this reason it is a good idea to have a battery-powered air pump available as a back-up and plenty of batteries available to keep it running. If you have someone coming in to check on your house and/or other pets, even if they are not taking your fish care, you should instruct them how to set up and run this air pump in the event of such an occurrence. This one procedure could save all your fish.

During such times anyone taking care of the fish should be instructed to stop feeding the fish until power is returned. Aquarium lights should be left off. Leaving aquarium lights on may result in your returning to a green, algae-laden aquarium that could take a great deal of cleaning to get back in shape.

Most aquaria get enough light from the room for the fish to be able to see what they need to. Alternatives to leaving the lights off are to use a timer or to have the care-person turn them on for periods of time. With regard to timers, they are mechanical devices, which can fail or malfunction. If they do fail the effect may very well be the same as if you had just left the lights on. If you do have a caretaker turn the lights on be sure to have him turn them off before leaving. Again, be certain to explain why this is so important and what can happen if the light stay on.

Good planning and communication can result in very good care of your fish and aquarium and a tremendous sense of security for you while you are away, allowing you and your fish care to enjoy your vacation.

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