aaron.c
Member
Hey All
I know there has been a lot of these posts in the past and I have read lots of them.
I wanted to run my plan past you as a sense check more than anything really.
We are going away for 8 days in a few weeks, and then for 15 days in August.
My tank is pretty well planted at the moment as per below (taken after a recent rescape so plants still bedding in)
My plan for the 8 day holiday is as follows;
EI - Dosing via Jebao DP-4. I have this setup and have been dosing into glasses to check that doses are working as expected. Plan to halve dosage.
Liquid CO2 - Added by the Jebao at 7ml a day, slowly increasing this.
Light - 2 x Grobeam 600 at 60% for 5 hours currently - plan to reduce photo period by 2 hours.
CO2 (via upline and through spray bars) - Injected 2 hours before lights come on, and goes off at 20.30 (2.5 hours before lights go out, but drop checkers are yellow by 20.30 and fish can gasp a bit if I push it any further). So will keep on time, but bring forward off time by 2 hours, as per shorter photo period.
Top Up - Being an open top tank, I lose a fair bit of water. This bothers me, as CO2 regimen requires a decent surface ripple to keep fish happy. On the flip side, if it drops too much, spray will break water surface and drive off too much CO2. To combat this I have a TMC Auto Top up and 10litre RO jerry can. I have been testing this auto topup and it seems to keep levels fairly consistent.
Feeding - For the 8 day break I am considering not feeding at all. However, potentially I could get someone in one or twice.
So, I have some questions...
1. Do you think lighting, EI and CO2 reduction for a 1 week holiday are actually necesary? My thinking was to reduce everything to slow the tank down.
2. Any thoughts on the autotup? The pump does 200l/hr so I am slighlty nervous of something going wrong and flooding the tank. I was wondering about a timer. Or perhaps monitoring evaoparation and only providing about as much RO as the tank will need. Not sure how much extra water the tank can take before an overflow issue. Guess I could add a known amount of RO and measure the increase in water level height and divde the headroom by this figure.
We have a dog walker that actually offers to look after other pets. So I am wondering if it might be worth getting them in once or twice to feed and check things over. I.e make sure the tank is not too high, and check there is RO water in the jerry can (I will provide an extra jerry can of it.).
Any thoughts would be great
I know there has been a lot of these posts in the past and I have read lots of them.
I wanted to run my plan past you as a sense check more than anything really.
We are going away for 8 days in a few weeks, and then for 15 days in August.
My tank is pretty well planted at the moment as per below (taken after a recent rescape so plants still bedding in)
My plan for the 8 day holiday is as follows;
EI - Dosing via Jebao DP-4. I have this setup and have been dosing into glasses to check that doses are working as expected. Plan to halve dosage.
Liquid CO2 - Added by the Jebao at 7ml a day, slowly increasing this.
Light - 2 x Grobeam 600 at 60% for 5 hours currently - plan to reduce photo period by 2 hours.
CO2 (via upline and through spray bars) - Injected 2 hours before lights come on, and goes off at 20.30 (2.5 hours before lights go out, but drop checkers are yellow by 20.30 and fish can gasp a bit if I push it any further). So will keep on time, but bring forward off time by 2 hours, as per shorter photo period.
Top Up - Being an open top tank, I lose a fair bit of water. This bothers me, as CO2 regimen requires a decent surface ripple to keep fish happy. On the flip side, if it drops too much, spray will break water surface and drive off too much CO2. To combat this I have a TMC Auto Top up and 10litre RO jerry can. I have been testing this auto topup and it seems to keep levels fairly consistent.
Feeding - For the 8 day break I am considering not feeding at all. However, potentially I could get someone in one or twice.
So, I have some questions...
1. Do you think lighting, EI and CO2 reduction for a 1 week holiday are actually necesary? My thinking was to reduce everything to slow the tank down.
2. Any thoughts on the autotup? The pump does 200l/hr so I am slighlty nervous of something going wrong and flooding the tank. I was wondering about a timer. Or perhaps monitoring evaoparation and only providing about as much RO as the tank will need. Not sure how much extra water the tank can take before an overflow issue. Guess I could add a known amount of RO and measure the increase in water level height and divde the headroom by this figure.
We have a dog walker that actually offers to look after other pets. So I am wondering if it might be worth getting them in once or twice to feed and check things over. I.e make sure the tank is not too high, and check there is RO water in the jerry can (I will provide an extra jerry can of it.).
Any thoughts would be great