dwarfgourami
Fish Connoisseur
Whew! Came back last night after a week away with no fishsitter, dreading to see the state of the tanks.
What I did before going was:
In the 70 ltrs (5 corys) put King British catfish pellets in a Hagen 2x automatic feeder (feeds twice daily), on the lowest dose.
In the 60 ltrs (3 guppies, 3 platies) put in 3 Tetra holiday sticks.
Did 30% water change before I left. Lights in both tanks are on automatic timers.
On coming back all fish looked fine. One platy was a little bit fatter than before and one a little bit thinner (so presumably she didn't like the tetra sticks). The ammonia and nitrites were fine, only the smallest trace of ammonia in one tank, but closer to 0 than to 0.25.
Both tanks were dirtier than usual though, more guck came out when I changed the water. Some brown algae in the livebearer tank. Clear signs of overfeeding in the cory tank= lots of brown algae and some patches of blue-green on the bogwood. TBH I don't think it's that the feeder overdoses; it's more that my cats really don't like those pellets (tried handfeeding them before I went away and not much got eaten then).
Did a 30% water change this morning and will do another one in a few days time.
The greatest cost I believe was to my nerves rather than my fish's health; next time I will definitely try hard and start well in advance to get someone to come in. And we won't finish stocking until after the summer hols; were going to round off with a pair of dwarf gouramis.
Oh, and this morning the cat's pump packed up and had to be taken apart and put together again!
What I did before going was:
In the 70 ltrs (5 corys) put King British catfish pellets in a Hagen 2x automatic feeder (feeds twice daily), on the lowest dose.
In the 60 ltrs (3 guppies, 3 platies) put in 3 Tetra holiday sticks.
Did 30% water change before I left. Lights in both tanks are on automatic timers.
On coming back all fish looked fine. One platy was a little bit fatter than before and one a little bit thinner (so presumably she didn't like the tetra sticks). The ammonia and nitrites were fine, only the smallest trace of ammonia in one tank, but closer to 0 than to 0.25.
Both tanks were dirtier than usual though, more guck came out when I changed the water. Some brown algae in the livebearer tank. Clear signs of overfeeding in the cory tank= lots of brown algae and some patches of blue-green on the bogwood. TBH I don't think it's that the feeder overdoses; it's more that my cats really don't like those pellets (tried handfeeding them before I went away and not much got eaten then).
Did a 30% water change this morning and will do another one in a few days time.
The greatest cost I believe was to my nerves rather than my fish's health; next time I will definitely try hard and start well in advance to get someone to come in. And we won't finish stocking until after the summer hols; were going to round off with a pair of dwarf gouramis.
Oh, and this morning the cat's pump packed up and had to be taken apart and put together again!
