Back from 10 day trip...the tank survived...

[Sk8r]

...a 105 degree heat wave, and a very good novice fish-sitter, who fed daily, dosed calcium, [on her birthday] tested daily, checked my autotopoff, and reported the results via phone. The corals grew, the fish survived, and the chemistry is:
alk: 9.6
cal: 370
temp: 80.1
salinity: 1.024.

My fish-sitter is going to get a steak dinner.

[Ritten]

It just doesn't get any better than that!

[Rijinals]

and the rest!!

[whiirly]

you can probally hire her out and make a ton of money

[onefin]

Glad you had no problems.

[newreefbishop]

great job....only think buffer your alk....its a bit high.....but great job nontheless

[AquaReeferMan]

Thats nice everything worked out good for you. Me on the other hand had someone, who I thought knew what he was doing, watch my tank. Boy that was a bad idea. I come home and my actinics were turned off my the switch and not by the timer(so they didnt come on during the day), my harliquin shrimp was dead, corals were not open much and about 3 gallons of water evaporated. After getting the leftovers of the shrimp out and slowly lowering my salinity everything came back to normal. The funny thing was this kid had tanks of his own. I wanted to slap him. It makes me not want to go on vacation again.

[phishlet]

That's why I set up a web cam on my reef. I can make sure my sitter is feeding the fish... and I can make sure that the fish are still swimming. :)

[Sk8r]

There's something to be said for someone who really doesn't know anything but what's in the instructions---and who reads them several times before proceeding.

Re the alk---yep. I preceded my trip by dumping 10 tsp [52 gal tank with a gallon a day evap rate] into my buffer reservoir, then having a total reservoir accident. I delayed my trip one day to straighten it out, and got it down to 10.5 before I left. My sitter was told not to mess with the buffer. I'm going to let it fall naturally for the next while, now that I'm back. I like to have it around 8.3. I was really tired, trying to pre-do everything, and let my autotopoff run berserk for a bit, and created a real mess! So double kudos to my tank sitter, who took a particularly fragile tank and was absolutely meticulous. [She loves running the chemistry tests, and does them well---which is a good thing!]

[flameangel88]

Last time I went away for 9 days my fish-sitter came over 3x to feed the 2 tanks and top-offs and caused a flood in the house, tube coral dried up due to low water level and one dead fish. Need to find a new sitter on the next trip. You are very fortunated to have a good sitter and you can go next time w/o too much to worry.

[larac]

I went on a ten day vacation and decided against a sitter. I covered my tank top, which is normally open, and had almost no evaporation. The skimmer was set to dry and I put on an automatic feeder. Everything was fine. Actually, my softies looked better and had even grown a bit- which rather hurt my feelings. ;) I think ten days is probably the max though.

[MacnReef]

Well, I went on a 5 day vacation back when I had my SPS dominated 180 BB and when I got back the tank was in terrible shape. I passed on a sitter because it was mostly automated...unfortunately, part of the automation...halide timer stuck on the day I left and cooked everything.:eek1: From now on, I am getting someone to atleast come over and check the equipment.

Congrats to you!

Mike

[maroun.c]

I am really lucky to have had my sister take care of the tank and on several occasions with great success. Murphy of course wouldn't have it pass i had lots of ich outbreaks on some fish that I had to quarantine 2 days before I travel and my sister managed really well to proceed with copper treatment or with performing and maintaining hypoosalinity for sick fish...
the worst time was when of hte partitions of my refugium broke down and spilled water on teh ground, the bad thing was that it was the partition that received water from the tank through a pump (refugium taller than tank and water going by a pump from tank to refug and draining back by gravity) the pump would have contiinued to drain the main tank till around 5-6 inches which would have uncovered the top corals and caused a sever flood in the house. My sister turned off the pump disconnected it from the tubing and connected a pipe to it and made it transfer water to the second partition of the refugium which contained the macroalga and which supplied water to the front partition which was a small visible part that I was using as coral grow out and water was draiing back from those two partitions without going to the 1st one which is a bit higher.... All that without even calling me. finally 8 months ago I had to relocate to Dubai and since then my sister and parents are taking care of the tank on their own with very little supervision from me and it's working great. hopefully I will have a tank running soon to be able to transfer my livestock and stop the tank or at least have it run as FO which will be easier for them to maintain.