Leaving my Shrimp for Spring Break

[Craigery]

Hello Fish forum,
I have spring break coming up in a week, and I was wondering if it would be okay to leave my japanese algae eating shrimp in the tank for the week. I will be taking my betta home (he does not bother the shrimp at all) and I would rather just take the betta. The tank has a good amount of algae that I do no think would be a problem feeding all 3 of the shrimp. Should I keep the light on for the algae when I leave, or turn it off?
Any comments will be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[hobby5]

Welcome to TFF!

If you leave only for 7 days there will be no problem for the shrimps. Also the betta should be fine and imho it would be much better for the betta to avoid the stress of travelling and changing environment for him too.

 

[Craigery]

I will be leaving Friday and be gone until the sunday at the end of spring break, so I would rather not chance my betta not eating for 10 days. I only have an hour ride, and I will have a fish tank set up for my betta ready to go by the time I get home. I was thinking about a 5 gallon tank as his "vacation" home. That way I can transport some water from where we normally are and he has less factors that will stress him.

 

[hobby5]

If your betta and his tank are healthy, 10 days are absolutely no problem for him. I forgot to mention you should put the light on a timer, so there is a normal day-night-cycle. Don't leave it on all the time! Set the temp rather close to the minimum, certainly not to the max. Do a water change before you leave.

 

[StevenF]

I use this automatic fish feeder on my thank. I have gone on a 3 week vacation and the fish were fine. There are other brands on the market.

IF you use a automatic fish feeder set it up a week before you leave and verify it works by programming it to feed when you are home. One common mistake is people buy it and set it up and go on vacation. And then when they return they find it wasn't working or feeding too much (because they made a setup mistake). The link below is the one I use on my 5 gallon. For one fish you will have to set it up to its minimum setting.

https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=automatic+fish+feeder+eheim&tag=ff0d01-20