Tales of a vacation..

[joekr]

I have seen a couple of threads about vacations, what people do and what equipment they use to set their minds at ease. I thought I would share so that others might learn from my experience.

1. Equipment. 32 gallons of fresh water w/ heater and maxijet.
Tunze Osmolator 3155
Eheim Auto feeder

2. Preparation. I setup everything about 2 weeks in advance and let it run on its own.

The Tunze is somewhat a pain to setup, but the 2 monitors that maintain the water level make it worthwhile. The pain revolves around the lego like assembly of the two mounts. It took me about an hour to get everything pieced together. The cost of the Tunze is high as well, but the redundant sensors justified it in my mind. I didn't want to chance a Niagara Falls like incident from the second floor where the tank lives to the basement.

The Eheim auto feeder is simple and works well. The timer is straight forward and all my fish seem happy. It is battery driven and the only thing I did other than schedule the feed time was get the food crushed up enough to guarantee everyone got fed.

I had a neighbor check the tank mid week to make sure the skimmer was skimming and that the top off was doing what it was supposed to. I made it really clear to him (in a nice way) that he didn't need to touch anything unless I needed him to. I'm buying his family some steaks today at the butcher to thank him.

3. Next time.

I was going to buy a webcam, but I felt pretty comfortable that there would be no problems. Next time I will buy one just for a little extra piece of mind.

If anyone has anything they want to add or if there are any questions, fire away!