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What to do & what not to do before vacation (1 Viewer)

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Crxej1

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Hi

I will be gone for a week or so. What should i do/dont do before going out of town?
Heres a little info

Display 120 gallons sps tank
Carx
7.5 ato reservoir

Frag tank zoas/acans/bounces
150 gallons
Chiller
Doser (2 part)
20 gallon ato reservoir

I usually feed frozen only. But ill be setting up a pellet auto feeder
No water changes, i dose supplements as well. ( i use ati icp test)
 

OceansX

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I travel regularly for up to 7-8 weeks at a time. I can monitor my aquarium remotely and often have my parents home to hopefully notice anything unusual.

For a week, I wouldn't worry too much. The tank should be able to coast by even if an issue turns up.

Foremost, do NOT do anything NEW to the tank 2-3 days before leaving e.g. water change, add equipment, etc.. (I learned this from Sanjay Joshi and my own reefing experinece.) Reason being, you do not want to mess something up or have something new develop a problem while you are away. I've often done a water change and forgotten to turn the ATO or skimmer back on, had a rock fall, bumped loose a coral or two, had a pump decide not to turn back on (lock-up), etc.. You do NOT want this to happen right as you are leaving without time to get parts or left unresolved while you are way.

For my travel schedule, I have done some planning. I have 2 auto-feeders set for my tank that work when I'm either home or away. Before I leave I make sure they have food and are running. I have 11 small fish in a ~200 gallon. They can do without food for 10 days as I try to keep them fat (2 damsels, 2 clowns, 6 anthias). My ATO is set to auto fill twice a week - a mechanical float off in the ATO reservoir and a solenoid that turns on the RODI for a limited time. Finally, I have a battery back-up for a powerhead if the power goes out.

More than 4 days before leaving, I do a water change if its upcoming, check all equipment, and have a back-up plan set for problems: I have a spare key with a reefing friend and a service person number handy for an on-call emergency i.e. Urban Aquatics. I have all my power wires labelled and Urban has handled my aquarium before so they are familiar with it.


Since you are going away for only a week, I wouldn't stress too much about the auto-feeders unless you can test them for several days before leaving. Overfeeding is one of the top reasons for tank crashes.

Safe travels,

Sharath
 

mittens

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Lol. Apex and David from UA. Out of town for 2 days. OCD


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Cody

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Hi

I will be gone for a week or so. What should i do/dont do before going out of town?
Heres a little info

Display 120 gallons sps tank
Carx
7.5 ato reservoir

Frag tank zoas/acans/bounces
150 gallons
Chiller
Doser (2 part)
20 gallon ato reservoir

I usually feed frozen only. But ill be setting up a pellet auto feeder
No water changes, i dose supplements as well. ( i use ati icp test)
Don't do anything. Never change a single thing two weeks before leaving. Worst case scenario, nothing less than one week before you leave.
 

Tenny

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Agreed with everyone else.
  • Water Change about 3-4 days prior to leaving
  • Ensure ATO reservoir is topped off (or even a week before change to a bigger reservoir if it's a long trip)
  • Setup auto-feeder to begin about a week prior to leaving (and stop feeding manually or supplement very minimally)
  • Set up camera's to watch your tank
  • Ensure the aquarium controller's alarms are working properly.
  • Ensure you know someone that is available to come check your tank if you see anything wrong.

A few years back on a trip during thanksgiving. I had a good friend (president of the reef club back where I'm from) that would come over each day to check on the tank (he lived a few blocks away) (and feed the cats). There were two wall outlets and one of the outlets wasn't the most "stable" and it just randomly stopped. The one that stopped had the return pump on it. The one that kept working had the temperature sensor and heater. So from my perspective everything was fine, but when he got there he noticed one of the lights was off. Immediately he figured what happened, tank dropped to like 65 degrees. He was able to get it back up and going fairly quickly. Thankfully nothing died. So it pays to have someone knowledgeable that you trust to come over. Also if I had a camera on the tank I would have known there was an issue based on the lights.
 

sneezebeetle

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Agree! I'm actually away right now so I put stickies on all my tanks for my house/tank sitter. She knows what and how much to feed everyone as well as things that are normal and not normal so she knows when to call me. For my tanks that don't have an ato, i left a 5gl jug of water near each one.

Lesson learned....5 days before leaving I decided I needed to raise my PH because I was tired of all the Apex alarms, decided to go with buffer and wasn't watching my Alk...needless to say for 3 days before leaving I was doing 20gl water changes each day to get my Alk back down as it shot from 8.3 to 15.6 in 2 days. I had no choice but to be happy with leaving my tank with an alk level of 11.8

SO....moral of this story is don't do anything to your tank right before leaving!

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OceansX

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About 2 weeks ago, I unintentionally set my return on some sort of pulse mode, & then had to readjust my Bean Animal overflow.

I did a water change a couple of days before I left & caught that the return was in the wrong mode and set into the right mode. Now after 2 days away, I realize I didn’t adjust the drain valve back.

Should I have listened to Cody’s advice?

I still think working on the tank several days before is okay, but of course with risk. It really depends how long you are away and how frequent your travel schedule is.
 

Cody

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About 2 weeks ago, I unintentionally set my return on some sort of pulse mode, & then had to readjust my Bean Animal overflow.

I did a water change a couple of days before I left & caught that the return was in the wrong mode and set into the right mode. Now after 2 days away, I realize I didn’t adjust the drain valve back.

Should I have listened to Cody’s advice?

I still think working on the tank several days before is okay, but of course with risk. It really depends how long you are away and how frequent your travel schedule is.
Clearly, working on your tank a few days before you left worked out well for you ;):ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 

Tangs

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I usually never travel longer than a week. I like to take mini trips often ya. When I do go for a week I give my tank a partial water change few days before I go and use an auto feeder. I live in a much colder climate than yous so I make sure my heaters are working fine. ya
 

steveb

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I try to do a partial water change a few days before. top off everything day before. leave it in the hands of tank sitter with the #'s of a few other reefing folk they can call. unless the sitter is reefing folk..
 

eraser2001

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I will be on vacation soon. I started to prepare for that. Calcium reactor full, a lot water from my ro/di filter, automatic feeder full, food on my DOS for feed my fishes and one the most important thing, hire a human Trident to review my alk all days [emoji12]

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Cody

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I will be on vacation soon. I started to prepare for that. Calcium reactor full, a lot water from my ro/di filter, automatic feeder full, food on my DOS for feed my fishes and one the most important thing, hire a human Trident to review my alk all days [emoji12]

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Can I have your exact schedule of when you're leaving/coming, address, and a copy of your key? I definitely won't frag any of your colonies.
 

Cody

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😂😂😂. I wouldnt frag. Just take the wholo colonies
Nah that's wrong. I'd definitely leave him a frag. Don't want to be a jerk or anything.
 
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Crxej1

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Well, i was gone for 7 days. Came back & lost uc og strawberry shortcake & needle in a hystach ;(. Still not bad
 
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