Leaving for a Week?

So i am going to be away from my tanks for a week! :-X YIKES!!! I am going to do my water changes before i leave. I have a neighbor coming by to help top off daily and feed a couple times while im gone. He is intelligent and has two freshwater tanks. My only concern while im gone is the return pumps running dry while no one is around. I had come up with a couple solutions to eliminate the problem but would like others input on the situation.
I am running two bio cubes by the way!

1. Turn of the return pumps and just leave the Koralias on. :-[
2. Over fill the tank with new salt water when i do the water change before i leave, so the pumps have less of a chance of running dry.:-/
3. Move the return pumps into the display tank and disable the flow in the back chambers.

My neighbor is coming over every day to top off, so i dont think any of this is necessary. But should any of these things i listed above be done? I think it would harm the tanks more than helping them!
Thanks

 

Why would the returns run dry when he's gonna be topping off....?

 

i run 150watt MH on both tanks. I top off twice to three times daily and sometimes the waterline drops enough to allow the pumps to gurgle. Just wondering if any of the things i listed should be considered?

 

how is it that you are using up water that fast? I only need to top off my 125g twice a week...

 

Sounds like you need a fan between them lights and ur water if you dont already..that should cut down on your evaporation some..

 

i live in a very dry area also, this might have something to do with the amount of evaporation. I also try to top off more times a day with less amounts of RO water. This way the salinity fluctuations are jumping less.

 

I'd get an ATO if I were you LOL

 

I think that a fan would actually increase your evaporation and increase your top-off needs.

If you have to top-off twice a day, then an auto top-off system would definately be money well spent.

If your friend is going to top off every day for you, then I expect that will get you through. You obviously don't want your pumps to run dry but a little bit of gurgling isn't likely to do serious damage to them.

 

Well, I agree that the fan will only increase evaporation, so I wouldn't do that. I would turn off the returns for a week. Just use the Ks in the tanks for flow. If you need, put a bag of carbon in the tank, but you probably don't have to for only a week. When you get back I would highly suggest looking into an ATO, even if you need to rig it up somehow.

 

fans would add to evaporation, and i would get a grease pencil and draw a line where the water needs to be just to make it idiot proof, every time i went on vacation i always asked is the water at the line if they said yes it just made me feel better