Leaving for 4 days

[arandacole]

Is it possible to leave the tank unattended for that long?
We have the lights on a timer and I could feed them on Thur. and then again on Sunday...
My gut is telling me no, that I need someone to check on it.. but I don't really have anyone I totally trust to do it... so I thought I'd ask.
Thanks!
Love,
A

 

[quis]

I would like to know too, since I'm leaving town for four days next.

 

[hardcrab67]

Top-off and feeding are the two biggest problems of leaving the tank for more than a day IMO. I'm adding 1 gal a day for top-off. 2 days w/o feeding would probally be alright for mature fish, younger ones might suffer though. I'm in the same boat. I'm adding an auto top-off system and have a friend to feed while I'm gone. Still going to worry though.

 

[poniegirl]

I think 4 days with no food is not a fair idea.
There are folks that will "fish sit" for a price..I'm fortunate to know teenagers that I trust that are always game to earn a few extra dollars.
It is a trust issue, but your fish need food.

 

[natureboy]

I think that it all depends on what you have in the tank. Ive left my tank unattended for 3-4 days before several times. I have a yellow tang, clown, chromis, mandarin, blenny, zoos and several corals in a 75g. of course i don't evaporate a gallon a day. Healthy feedings and excessive top off before i leave (just enough so that it wont overflow if i loose power).

 

[misty7850]

I've left my tank for 2 days max.. I feed them just before leaving and again when I got back. But I put in an auto top off before doing this.. Any thing more than that I have my son come over to feed them.

 

[wattsupdoc]

I can tell you how to make an auto top off out of a water jug,a female fitting and a turkey baster if you like. I left mine for 9 days.But I had a neighbor kid feed for me while I was gone. This is what I did.
Shut down my skimmer..I was worried about an incident with it malfunctioning, also this gave me about an additionasl 1.5 gallons of SW. Also I run my SG at 1.024ish. So increasing the SG up to 1.026 wouldnt be a problem.
Added an additional gallon of water to my sump.
So far 2.5 days of evaporation covered.
Filled my autotopoff off awith 3 gallons of fresh water.
Now we got 5.5 to 6 days covered.
When I shut my skimmer down it dramaticly reduced the amount of evaporation on my setup. I had instructed the kid who was feeding on how to add to the topoff. But he said he never needed to.When I got back home nine days later, my autotopoff had still about a 1/2 gallon in it.