What do you do when in vacation?

[Kplum]

When you guys go away for a week or so on vacsrion or business. What do you do with sump? Disconnect it? Let it ride? I am asking from more of a siphon overflow situation.. Just curious..
Thanks in advance!!

 

[Urtoo]

Do you run it when you are away from home? Same as that, just longer.
I rely on my ReefPi and check it every morning and night when on vacation.
add a water level IP cam while away, if needed, I have a well trusted reef buddie to call and he’s got my 6 in a pinch

 

[mindme]

If I turned off my sump, the tank would freeze to death. Although I guess I could move the thermostat up in the house, I would be guessing because I'm not doing that while I'm here.

I would get a much bigger ATO container and set it to the side of the tank. I would also add a bunch of extra water to my sump that would probably last a day or 2 with just that. I have 180g tank, so for me that's about 5-6 gallons and it doesn't affect my salinity really.

And you need an autofeeder if you have fish. Last year I was out of town for about 9 days and my 25g cube auto feeder dumped way too much food while I was gone. I came back to a tank full of algae, so make sure your autofeeder doesn't over do it. Glad I didn't use things like vibrant, because I probably would have come home to a smelly dead tank.

 

[sfin52]

Do not make any adjustments before going on vacation. Any new changes should be made well in advance of going.

 

[tinhorse]

The longest I've gone away is 10 days. I cover the top with glass to try and stave off evaporation. Use an auto feeder with the adjustment taped into the correct position to ensure it doesn't open and dump in too much. I have a couple 5 gallon buckets of top off water next to the tank so when my neighbor comes over to fill the cat food he can just dump a couple gallons in and I have my alk and cal. measured out so he can add that to the sump also. I dont have an auto doser as of yet. Lights on timers and I have ensured that if the power goes out no flooding will occur upon re powering up. Always a chance that if the power were out to long **** may hit the fan but there hasn't been a power outage here for longer than 4 hours in 10+ years.

 

[malacoda]

A properly sized sump should have enough 'empty' volume to receive all of the water that siphons down from the DT when the power goes out. If your sump doesn't, then the only 100% guaranteed way to prevent sump overflow would be to get a larger sump.

One way of reducing the amount of water that siphons back down is drill a small 'siphon break' hole in your return line(s)/nozzle(s) just below the normal operating waterline in the display tank. But this really only offers partial safety. If the hole is too small or becomes clogged with algae, a snail, or covered with coralline, it won't allow enough air in to break the siphon.

That said, when I go on vacation, I just turn off my skimmer, remove the filter floss from my sump baffle, set up an auto feeder, run a line from my ATO pump to a 30 gal rubbermaind next to the tank with fresh RO in it ... and let the tank run normally. Yes, the nutrients may rise a little bit. But after a few normal water changes and they come back down to normal levels.

I've left my tank run 3.5 weeks like this on more than one vacation.