Note: I waited until returning from vacation before writing these steps up, just to confirm that they weren't disastrous. Fortunately everything went peachy.
Something I didn't know when I jumped headlong into this hobby a year ago was just how much daily care and worry is involved in keeping a reef aquarium. A seemingly endless list of variables related to inhabitants, equipment, feeding and parameters are available for the aquarist to worry and fuss over. Leaving for an extended vacation then requires the foresight and planning involved in moving a tank, and the ability to put faith in your caretaker. What follows are the issues I considered and how I prepared for them prior to our annual Dominican trip.
Evaporation and top offs
With a nano tank lit by halides and cooled by a fan, evaporation is fast. I generally top off close to half a gallon of fresh RO/DI filtered water every two days in order to maintain stable salinity parameters and maintain an appropriate water level for my pump and skimmer. To streamline this process for the friend would be checking on the tank, I filtered five gallons of new water and left it next to the tank. We established a schedule for check ins around what I considered to be the maximum length between top offs, having him stop by every three days.
Skimming
While I don't have the worry of an external sump and plumbing system that could conceivably fail and result in flooding, I do have an extremely finicking external protein skimmer. This unit is on my shortlist for replacement, due to its tendency to randomly begin skimming far too wet, resulting in a potential flood. I made the decision to run the tank without a skimmer during the duration of my vacation to negate any possibility of flood.
Feeding and parameters
I demonstrated to my friend the appropriate amount of food and decided that a medium feeding once every three days would be enough to get the tank through the week. The lighter feeding schedule would also help offset any issue of excess nutrients building up while the tank is running without a skimmer. After experimenting with various supplements, I have since moved the tank to using only weekly water changes to maintain stable calcium, alkalinity, and mineral levels. As such, it wasn't necessary to establish instructions for maintaining a complicated two-part dosing schedule.
Keep it simple
I left a bulleted list of the maintenance steps along with instructions for the rest of our apartment (getting the mail, feeding the cat, etc) taped in two places around the apartment. I returned from vacation to a perfectly healthy tank, looking as if I hadn't been gone at all. In fact, a few colonies that had been showing issues seemed to be on the rebound. Some simple planing and a good friend made leaving the tank for over a week an easy process.
Something I didn't know when I jumped headlong into this hobby a year ago was just how much daily care and worry is involved in keeping a reef aquarium. A seemingly endless list of variables related to inhabitants, equipment, feeding and parameters are available for the aquarist to worry and fuss over. Leaving for an extended vacation then requires the foresight and planning involved in moving a tank, and the ability to put faith in your caretaker. What follows are the issues I considered and how I prepared for them prior to our annual Dominican trip.
Evaporation and top offs
With a nano tank lit by halides and cooled by a fan, evaporation is fast. I generally top off close to half a gallon of fresh RO/DI filtered water every two days in order to maintain stable salinity parameters and maintain an appropriate water level for my pump and skimmer. To streamline this process for the friend would be checking on the tank, I filtered five gallons of new water and left it next to the tank. We established a schedule for check ins around what I considered to be the maximum length between top offs, having him stop by every three days.
Skimming
While I don't have the worry of an external sump and plumbing system that could conceivably fail and result in flooding, I do have an extremely finicking external protein skimmer. This unit is on my shortlist for replacement, due to its tendency to randomly begin skimming far too wet, resulting in a potential flood. I made the decision to run the tank without a skimmer during the duration of my vacation to negate any possibility of flood.
Feeding and parameters
I demonstrated to my friend the appropriate amount of food and decided that a medium feeding once every three days would be enough to get the tank through the week. The lighter feeding schedule would also help offset any issue of excess nutrients building up while the tank is running without a skimmer. After experimenting with various supplements, I have since moved the tank to using only weekly water changes to maintain stable calcium, alkalinity, and mineral levels. As such, it wasn't necessary to establish instructions for maintaining a complicated two-part dosing schedule.
Keep it simple
I left a bulleted list of the maintenance steps along with instructions for the rest of our apartment (getting the mail, feeding the cat, etc) taped in two places around the apartment. I returned from vacation to a perfectly healthy tank, looking as if I hadn't been gone at all. In fact, a few colonies that had been showing issues seemed to be on the rebound. Some simple planing and a good friend made leaving the tank for over a week an easy process.
Labels: Maintenance, Reef Aquarium, Vacation
