Planning for a vacation... UPDATE on 2nd Page!

Sounds like you have it all figured out! Nice DIY!

 

Well I'm off to Indiana for thanksgiving, I hope my fishes are all still healthy when I get back!

 

I personally have to many fish tanks to be able to run that option but a friend of mine at a lfs does come over every other day and feeds a bit heavier then I normally would just because of every other day. Tops off and checks total system. I personally if I was in your shoes would set everything and give it a trial run to make sure it will run flawless. I too am going on vacation this week and am doing the water changes tommorow. Good luck.

 

That's a long time to go w/o any body there or at least checking on them. I also hope you have good insurance. Not that it's likely to happen, but bad things seem to occur when you aren't there. For example, just the other day, my float valve to my ATO got stuck and emptied my reservior which at the time was only about a gallon, no big deal. However, if I wasn't home to catch it in time, my ATO pump would have died for pumping air and if my reservoir had been filled, my tank probably would have overflowed, which could result in water getting on the wires/short circuits, fire etc. I don't mean to scare you, and wish your tank the best over the next ten day, but I couldn't go away for that long w/o a person who've I trained keeping the tank.

 

Haha very true. Things may happen. I just moved to SD this summer so have not net anyone that knows the first thing about fish keeping. I am wary of letting anyone feed the fish or mess with the tank. My landlords will check on the apartment once a day during the week however.

My own sanity check is that I usually only spend the latter portion of the night awake and at the house, so the chances of my catching any catastrophic error on time (floods mainly) would be very small as is. Haha. I spent the last week making sure the ATO would have enough water and that all of the floats were cleaned... And besides the water change this week, I have not touched the tank. (aside from preparing another mix of dry foods for the feeder) hope it works!

I'm sure the landlords will notify me of any catastrophes should they occur! (fingers crossed)

(and I have a pretty good amount of insurance!)

 

Annnd now I'm worried lol. I'll be calling my landlords once a day I guess lol.

 

Do you have a controller you can web into and check things out and get email alerts from it....like an APEX? They are worth their weight in gold!

Also setup a web cam so you can view your tank, its great peace of mind while you're away.

If you can have a family member or friend stop by also to make sure things are in check that would help too.

 

I'll be investing in one asap lol. I thought about the webcam idea. One is on the way but didn't arrive in time.

APEX is a good controller? Any other suggestions?

 

Reefangel a good controller? I might as well go ahead and spend some good money, I'll be able to use this on tanks to come so I want to get a good one.

 

All... update to my vacation... I came back last night around midnight, used a flashlight to check out my fishies and walah!!! They were alive! The floor was DRY! The collection cup/overflow was only 1/2 full! And that was only with the lights off

When I came home today from work I noticed amazing things can happen in 1 week! I'll try to upload some photos later but here is the gist of it. The week before I left I added another 8 pounds of base rock, and a CuC from reef cleaners... I came home to all of my base rock (including the monster 20 pound piece that has been in from the beginning) covered in neon green/purple algae (I am assuming corallaine!!! But dont hesitate to burst my bubble if needed lol). Also, The pod pop has SKY ROCKETED! The cheato and ?name? (fuzzy red stuff) has blown up in my refugium, and pods are all over it! I am very very happy... It's amazing what mother nature can do in one week of not trying to play God over the system. The fishies were happy to see me I think, but I can only assume they were very content all week without me (sad face ;-p)

OK, the only bad part is I have accumulated what I assume to be the beginning of some cyano and some other algae that isnt good I think (its like cyano but green?)
What should I do to get rid of it? I am assuming an invert?

Guess I can plan on getting that mandarin soon, and I can try out my brine shrimp hatchery also!

ANother note, I invested in a reefangel controller that should be here this week and I am excited to program some wicked online monitoring system and eventually an iphone app in the near future.

Thanks for all of the advice, and any additional advice would be appreciated. Photos to come if I can find my camera. and of course I need to scrape the glass pretty well lol