Can I do this?

[benwhite]

Hello all,

I have for years wanted a beautiful reef tank. I'm envious of the beautiful living art many of you put together, and wold like to join the ranks. I have the space and budget for a reasonably sized tank, but I have one big concern: I travel. I'm not gone all that frequently, but several times a year I'm out for a week to 10 days. My question is can a reef aquarium be assembled so that it can be self sufficient for a week? I can afford to invest in automation (feeders, electronics to control pumps, etc) but I would like to hear some input from experienced aquarists on this subject.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Ben

[thegrun]

10 days is about the limit for my tank. I arrange to have someone do a quick check mid vacation just to be sure all is well, but 10 days should be doable. I would go with an Apex Neptune controller (not the lite version), as it allows you to not only monitor your tank but also make changes via the internet. The key is having a large enough ATO reservoir and a good auto fish feeder. The limiting factor for me is my ATO reservoir, although I'm sure I could just add a couple of 5 gallon buckets to increase volume if I knew I was going to be gone longer.

[Palting]

I leave my tank alone for 7-14 days at a stretch occasionally. During that time, fish and coral get no feeding. Well actually they do eat whatever is in the tank. what I mean is that there is no one to feed them, whether manually or by auto feeder. So long as the fish are well fed and eating well in general, they will do fine for this short period. Been doing this for over 2 years.

As for top off water to compensate for evaporation, I do have an ATO with enough water in a reservoir to last 2 weeks or more.

When your tank gets to the point that there are a lot of stonies that consume alk/calcium/mag, you can get automated dosers. I have those, too.

A skimmer can accumulate enough product that it needs to be emptied about twice a week. When I leave for vacation, I just set the skimmer to "very dry", so that it produces less skim, but more concentrated. Works for me.

So, in answer to your question, you can leave a reef tank alone for up to two weeks, IME. Now, as to the unforseen, such as malfunctioning equipment, busted pipes, broken seals, etc, that may happen while you are gone, well, that's a risk you will have to take. If you are unwilling to take that risk, one option is to have a trusted friend or relative look in every so often to make sure nothing is leaking or not running. An LFS owner is the father of one of my kids clasmates, and I asked him to check on my tank the first time the family went on vacation. Do nothing, but just check to make sure nothing sprung a leak or something. I gave him the keys to the house. Since he was an LFS owner, he decided to...ah.... "improve" my set-up a little. LOL! Good intentions, but I liked my set-up just the way it was. I thanked him, but never asked him to babysit my tank again.

[b0bab0ey]

Do you have a wife or a friend you could train to just feed/top-off the tank while you're away? You might be OK just using automatic feeders and an auto top off for evaporation, but it's still good to have someone stop by every few days to check and make sure everything is good.

[TX..r33f]

I agree with the others. If you have the controllers ect: it can be done. Also some systems send a message to your phone if something happens in your tank. EX- tempature drops to 74 , well the system can send you message that tells you that. Also yes you can train a friend to take care ofthe tank. Maybe you will get him/her in the hobby too!

[Merrell056]

I'm planning a 40 breeder system with automation in mind. I can be gone from 3 to 20 days at a time. Automation is key. A controller with remote capability is really good to have but it's useless without at least one person you can trust to help in crisis times.

[JPMagyar]

Hi Ben,

Yes you can make your system stable enough to leave it alone for 2 weeks but it takes years of trial and error. Realistically speaking you need a friend or a neighbor to keep an eye on things when you're gone. It's not that you need to worry about routine issues; it's more that you need protection against major disasters like leaks and power outages.

197722

[disc1]

I travel a LOT and my tank goes for week long stretches all the time. I have lots of stuff in place to help make sure of that, like an ATO that automatically tops itself off. The biggest problem for me is when a coral gets knocked over and I'm not there to set it back right. I've lost a few frags that way.