Tank instructions.

themcnertney · Jun 20, 2018

Does anyone have tank instructions to give others when one is on vacation or away for a long period of time? Other then the general “immediately call me if you think there is a issue or you have a question” here’s mine...

Fudsey · Jun 20, 2018

How long are you going away for? I would skip having someone else do a water change if at all possible (just asking for issues). I would do one right before I leave and then again once I get home if it is that important to you. Cleaning the skimmer, making sure ATO is running/topped off and feeding is all I would have someone else do to my tank.

SPR1968 · Jun 21, 2018

I completely agree with @Fudsey

Your asking for trouble if you let anyone ‘not suitably qualified’ so to speak touch anything on your system. Unless they maintain it a lot with you there is no way they can understand how everything works together.

When I go away for up to 2 weeks, I don’t touch the tank for the week before I go other than cleaning the skimmer a few days before and then topping up my ATO which will last around 2 weeks and that’s it.

My tank sitter (mother) just does a feed of frozen cubes every other day now and the Apex feeder does a second. She will also change the filter socks every 4 days for me but she knows how to do that, and not to touch anything else!

I have a video link and also apex monitoring it. Oh and I also cross my fingers and everything else and say a few Hale Mary's! lol

themcnertney · Jun 21, 2018

Well actually, let me clarify, I am not going anywhere any time soon. However, I travel quite a bit and have a buddy of mine stay at my place and watch over my tank. He knows the system very well and if any issues happen, I'm always just a phone call away and can typically solve it. AND LET ME SAY THAT WHEN I LEAVE, SOMETHING ALWAYS GOES WRONG (sometimes its a big deal, sometimes its not). He is capable of doing water changes which is nice because I can be gone for a couple weeks at a time. The instructions I have attached above are what I wrote a few years ago to help my buddy do the maintenance.

With all that said, when one is away from your tank(s), do you leave instructions for those babysitting and if so what all do they consist of?

Fudsey · Jun 21, 2018

Mine used to be just how to feed some frozen food every couple days and top off ato.

ZoWhat · Jun 21, 2018

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Silly....

You already said your buddy "knows the system well"

If it were me I'd K.I.S.S. it in two areas:

1) keeping fish fed but lighter amounts

2) keep the salinity constant by having your buddy take a refractometer reading everyday and adjust with top off water.

3) Go thru your list and scratch off items that can wait 2 weeks. Only delegate BARE MINIMUM daily items....

See..... If you throw a Big List of cleaning maintanence items at him, he may smile and agree, but inside his head he might not be thinking very good thoughts of you.

Even the best of Reefers, don't enjoy cleaning and maintenance. Save that stuff until you get back home.

Imo you'll have more success if you K.I.S.S his tank duties down to bare minimums.

chipmunkofdoom2 · Jun 21, 2018

What @Fudsey said. It sounds like in your situation, you have someone who is familiar with aquariums, so this type of stuff is no problem. But for everyone else reading, the work you leave for a tank-sitter should be realistic and as little as possible. If your sitter has never kept aquariums before, even feeding is going to be hard for them. Just convincing them that your fish are fine no matter how hungry they act is going to be difficult enough. Things like siphoning and water changes are very optional and I don't believe they should be on the normal "to-do" list for a tank sitter.

To your original point, @Dan McNertney, I think you make some good points. We all should have some sort of disaster recovery plans in place. I think hobbyists today put far too much focus on monitoring: being able to pull up our Apex dashboards gives us a false sense of security that "everything is under control." Sure, it's great to check your tank's temperature from anywhere in the world with Internet connectivity. And yeah, it's nice to know if your heater is stuck on or if your return pump dies. But if you're not able to get to your tank for a day or more, is your tank sitter really going to know how to swap out a spare heater or return pump? Do you even have a spare sitting on the shelf waiting? What if the heater fails catastropically, does your tank sitter know how to get all the pieces out without hurting themselves or electrocuting themselves? Is your wiring clean enough so that a reasonable person would actually be able to find a specific power cord for a specific device? Is your plumbing clean enough that swapping out return pumps is as simple as untwisting a union and installing the new pump? Would your tank sitter have to break out the PVC cutters and the Oatey to replace a broken return pump? Would they even know how to cut and bond PVC? Would they even have the time to do any of this?

I'm not advocating that we be willfully ignorant about the state of our tanks. But I think we need to be realistic about what Internet-connected controllers really offer us. Unless you have put some serious money and time into automating and redundancy, at most, your controller will just tell you something is wrong. If you're going to be away from your tank for more than a day or so, you really should have a detailed disaster recovery plan in place that can cover most of the common critical failures.