MondoBongo
Community Member
Greetings All,
I wanted to share with everyone what I did earlier this year to help my tank make it through a week without me (I'm still working on how best for ME to make it a week without my tank
).
In my opinion this is one of the most nerve racking times for a reefer, leaving the tank in someone Else's care for a time while you try to enjoy yourself hundreds of miles away.
First a little background about my tank, at the time i did not have my green mandarin, and was mainly feeding pellets and flakes, with nori for my tang. Once a week I would feed my corals frozen PE-Myses to supplement them. I have since started feeding more frozen items as my clowns have grown large enough to accept a more varied diet, and as my mandarin has joined our family. She will pick at pellets, but prefers Nutramar Ova and Cyclops-Eeze which I supplement her with daily, in addition to her pod foraging. So the next time I go away, I will likely need to figure out a system for keeping her food on schedule in addition to the dry food.
My technology is fairly simple as well. I drip kalk on a timer overnight through a BRS peristaltic dosing pump, and have a 5 gallon ATO reservoir with a Tunze Osmolator, both of which need refilled about once a week, give or take on the top off depending on the evaporation rate and time of year. My lighting is two AI Vega units with the little wireless controller that governs their cycle. I also have a 20G long quarantine tank, that i made sure was empty of inhabitants at the time, and left the lights off, so it required no additional care, not even top offs.
I keep a fairly simple mixed reef setup. Mostly softies and LPS, with a few smaller pieces of SPS that I am just starting to get in to. At the time I had 2 Percula Clowns who were still very small, about 1.5" or so, a yellow tang, and a lawnmower blenny about 3" in length.
Prior to setting up my reef tank I had asked my Mom if she would mind watching a fish tank for me if I decided to go away. She said no problem, not realizing that I wasn't talking about a small 10 gallon with a goldfish and a castle decoration.
Needless to say that she was more than a little intimidated my the prospect of caring for my miniature ocean world for a week while I was away. So I wanted to make the care as simple as possible.
My first order of business was making up 20 extra gallons of salt water in my mixing tub next to the main tank, and leaving it heated and aerated, just in case. Then I brought up 3 extra buckets of fresh RODI water, and labeled them clearly, setting them near my ATO tank, along with my pump I use to refill the ATO reservoir from the clean water buckets.
Being that I was going to be away for a full week, I also set up with my LFS that they would visit on the 3rd and 5th day to do a quick basic check of the tank. Temp, salinity, check the skimmer cup, and a visual inspection of the livestock. Just to be safe. This would get some professional eyes on the tank, but also minimize the costs of having someone visit for vacation service. I filled them in ahead of time on what I was wanting them to check on, and made sure I could give their contact information to my Mom in case of emergency.
For my Mom and LFS's benefit I made a series of short videos, each about 30 seconds in length, explaining how I perform some of the basic maintenance tasks such as refilling my ATO reservoir, refilling my kalk reservoir, checking the temperature, changing nori sheets on the clip, and feeding. I left these on the desktop of my laptop so they would be readily accessible in case anyone had any questions and couldn't reach me. I also took a little time to do a half hour "classroom" session so my Mom could see the maintenance tasks in person and take her own notes.
Last, but certainly not least I made my binder of information. This book was mainly for Mom, and covered some very basic tank information, emergency contact information at the LFS including their names and hours, food portions, and the instruction manual for my backup generator:
I portioned my nori in Ziploc bags, labeled for each day the sheet should be used on:
I noted information about the tank, the acceptable temperature range, and the lighting cycle:
Notes on where extra bags of salt and RODI could be found in case the LFS needed to brew an emergency batch in addition to what I had already prepared:
Operator's manual for my backup generator:
I wanted to share with everyone what I did earlier this year to help my tank make it through a week without me (I'm still working on how best for ME to make it a week without my tank
).In my opinion this is one of the most nerve racking times for a reefer, leaving the tank in someone Else's care for a time while you try to enjoy yourself hundreds of miles away.
First a little background about my tank, at the time i did not have my green mandarin, and was mainly feeding pellets and flakes, with nori for my tang. Once a week I would feed my corals frozen PE-Myses to supplement them. I have since started feeding more frozen items as my clowns have grown large enough to accept a more varied diet, and as my mandarin has joined our family. She will pick at pellets, but prefers Nutramar Ova and Cyclops-Eeze which I supplement her with daily, in addition to her pod foraging. So the next time I go away, I will likely need to figure out a system for keeping her food on schedule in addition to the dry food.
My technology is fairly simple as well. I drip kalk on a timer overnight through a BRS peristaltic dosing pump, and have a 5 gallon ATO reservoir with a Tunze Osmolator, both of which need refilled about once a week, give or take on the top off depending on the evaporation rate and time of year. My lighting is two AI Vega units with the little wireless controller that governs their cycle. I also have a 20G long quarantine tank, that i made sure was empty of inhabitants at the time, and left the lights off, so it required no additional care, not even top offs.
I keep a fairly simple mixed reef setup. Mostly softies and LPS, with a few smaller pieces of SPS that I am just starting to get in to. At the time I had 2 Percula Clowns who were still very small, about 1.5" or so, a yellow tang, and a lawnmower blenny about 3" in length.
Prior to setting up my reef tank I had asked my Mom if she would mind watching a fish tank for me if I decided to go away. She said no problem, not realizing that I wasn't talking about a small 10 gallon with a goldfish and a castle decoration.
Needless to say that she was more than a little intimidated my the prospect of caring for my miniature ocean world for a week while I was away. So I wanted to make the care as simple as possible.
My first order of business was making up 20 extra gallons of salt water in my mixing tub next to the main tank, and leaving it heated and aerated, just in case. Then I brought up 3 extra buckets of fresh RODI water, and labeled them clearly, setting them near my ATO tank, along with my pump I use to refill the ATO reservoir from the clean water buckets.
Being that I was going to be away for a full week, I also set up with my LFS that they would visit on the 3rd and 5th day to do a quick basic check of the tank. Temp, salinity, check the skimmer cup, and a visual inspection of the livestock. Just to be safe. This would get some professional eyes on the tank, but also minimize the costs of having someone visit for vacation service. I filled them in ahead of time on what I was wanting them to check on, and made sure I could give their contact information to my Mom in case of emergency.
For my Mom and LFS's benefit I made a series of short videos, each about 30 seconds in length, explaining how I perform some of the basic maintenance tasks such as refilling my ATO reservoir, refilling my kalk reservoir, checking the temperature, changing nori sheets on the clip, and feeding. I left these on the desktop of my laptop so they would be readily accessible in case anyone had any questions and couldn't reach me. I also took a little time to do a half hour "classroom" session so my Mom could see the maintenance tasks in person and take her own notes.
Last, but certainly not least I made my binder of information. This book was mainly for Mom, and covered some very basic tank information, emergency contact information at the LFS including their names and hours, food portions, and the instruction manual for my backup generator:
I portioned my nori in Ziploc bags, labeled for each day the sheet should be used on:
I noted information about the tank, the acceptable temperature range, and the lighting cycle:
Notes on where extra bags of salt and RODI could be found in case the LFS needed to brew an emergency batch in addition to what I had already prepared:
Operator's manual for my backup generator:
