Leaving for a 2 month vacation?

[starfishguy869]

Hello, I am going to be leaving for a 2-month vacation to China. Over the 2 months, I want to make sure my fish and corals stay safe. I have no Acropora or any difficult corals. By the time my I am leaving, my aquarium will about a year old. My Nitrates are sitting at around 8-10 ppm. That aside, I would like to know if the need to do water changes is necessary. I am leaving for about two months and will miss about 5-6 water changes. I usually do a 15% water change every two weeks and I also siphon the sand bed every 3 weeks. The starfish has made it much easier on me.

What I would like to ask is if it is okay to skip 2 months worth of water changes. I wanted to use controllers that would automatically do water changes for me, but I am worried they would flood my room. Also, do I need an ATO to top off my aquarium or is that not necessary?

My plan is to use an automatic feeder to feed the clownfish. Then, I will put in some trochus snails and a sea urchin to help with the algae that is inevitably going to invade over my rock, glass, and everything else. Finally, I will put a light on my refugium so that my in tank chaeto can go in the back. Finally, I will put the heater in the display tank just in case my return pump fails. And if an ATO is necessary, I will use the Tunze Osmolator Nano, which is the cheapest ATO I have found.

If anyone has any tips on how to keep an aquarium running while I'm away, please let me know. My stocking list and parameters are at the bottom


Tank is 16 gallons
Inverts:
1 Turbo snail
1 Trochus snail
2 Star shells
7 reef safe blue legged hermit crabs
1 sand sifting starfish (I know this isn't supposed to go in this small tank, but I'm trying something new )

Corals
Dragon soul Torch
Hammer coral
Goldenrod Anacropora
Leptoseris
Pocillopora
Blue mushroom coral
Orange chalice coral

Fish
Clownfish pair

Parameters:
Salinity: 1.026
Nitrates: 8-10
Phosphates: 0??? (Salifert tests are so hard to read!)
dKH: 11.9
Calcium: 510
Magnesium: 1480 (Would like this to be 1600)
Temperature: 25 degrees C
pH: Don't test

I hope this extra tidbit helps

 

[Jekyl]

Without outside help I don't know if 2 months is something I would ever try. At minimum a weekly inspection from a friend.

 

[OutColdCRNA]

How long until you leave. You need to figure out how much your alk drops per day. Are you dosing to keep it up? Or just using water changes. You will probably need a doser of some kind to dose alk and Ca because the Stoney corals will deplete it. Especially over two months. I would test alk every day at the same time to figure out your consumption and get a doser and start dialing it in to meet demand.

I think that would be my step one.

Step two. An ATO is a definite. You need to figure out how much you are topping off per week and then have a container to hold that amount for the duration of your trip.

 

[starfishguy869]

My Alk is so high that it almost never dips below 10 WITH water changes. However, I have never tested Alk without doing water changes. I might do a one month experiment on this. Calcium is easy for me to maintain because I dose it every 3 weeks. Also, it has never ever dipped below 470 on calcium even without water changes. When I get my ATO, I will add a little bit of baking soda to raise the Alk.

Also, has anyone ever used the Kamoer ATO? I find it for sale at $105 CAD which is really cheap for an ATO. If anyone has experience with this ATO, please tell me. Otherwise, I will use the Tunze Osmolator Nano.

 

[starfishguy869]

Bump?

 

[Reefer Matt]

I strongly recommend either a tank sitter in your home, or bringing the tank inhabitants to a lfs or reefing friend for temporary care.

 

[mfinn]

I don't see a good outcome unless you can find a tank sitter that is familiar with saltwater.
Maybe get a tank sitter and have them create an account here for help that might ( probably will) come up.

 

[Serpentman2024]

Two months is definitely too long to leave unattended. Even with all the automation I the world, you need some human intervention. Like others have recommended, definitely get a tank sitter or contact your LFS for help.

 

[exnisstech]

Tear it down and restart when you won't be taking 2 month vacations.

EDIT: your asking if an ato is needed tells me you are not experienced enough to leave the tank unattended. Not that anyone I know is skilled enough to leave a tank for 2 months. I think it would require more luck than skill. JMO

 

[tzabor10]

Have an every day tank sitter that will check on it. And have a once a week sitter from an LFS who can water change and rescue issues on call. It’s the only way to fly

 

[TheReefPA]

Either break it down or buy an ATO and reach out to a LFS for weekly service while you’re gone. Really isn’t an inbetween here.

 

[JayM]

I would venture a guess that two weeks is too long to not have eyes on your tank. Two months sounds like a recipe for disaster.

 

[Troylee]

Tear it down and restart when you won't be taking 2 month vacations.

EDIT: your asking if an ato is needed tells me you are not experienced enough to leave the tank unattended. Not that anyone I know is skilled enough to leave a tank for 2 months. I think it would require more luck than skill. JMO

That ain’t no lie! I’m stressed about leaving my tank for a week.. I’m going on vacation in a couple months and it’s on auto pilot but still! Haha..

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I would recommend getting someone you know you can trust to watch your tank

 

[rongy]

Agree with all above. Trade off between reef tank and vacation. If you have a tank, you would never want go vacation for more than two weeks

 

[Dom]

Hello, I am going to be leaving for a 2-month vacation to China. Over the 2 months, I want to make sure my fish and corals stay safe. I have no Acropora or any difficult corals. By the time my I am leaving, my aquarium will about a year old. My Nitrates are sitting at around 8-10 ppm. That aside, I would like to know if the need to do water changes is necessary. I am leaving for about two months and will miss about 5-6 water changes. I usually do a 15% water change every two weeks and I also siphon the sand bed every 3 weeks. The starfish has made it much easier on me.

What I would like to ask is if it is okay to skip 2 months worth of water changes. I wanted to use controllers that would automatically do water changes for me, but I am worried they would flood my room. Also, do I need an ATO to top off my aquarium or is that not necessary?

My plan is to use an automatic feeder to feed the clownfish. Then, I will put in some trochus snails and a sea urchin to help with the algae that is inevitably going to invade over my rock, glass, and everything else. Finally, I will put a light on my refugium so that my in tank chaeto can go in the back. Finally, I will put the heater in the display tank just in case my return pump fails. And if an ATO is necessary, I will use the Tunze Osmolator Nano, which is the cheapest ATO I have found.

If anyone has any tips on how to keep an aquarium running while I'm away, please let me know. My stocking list and parameters are at the bottom


Tank is 16 gallons
Inverts:
1 Turbo snail
1 Trochus snail
2 Star shells
7 reef safe blue legged hermit crabs
1 sand sifting starfish (I know this isn't supposed to go in this small tank, but I'm trying something new )

Corals
Dragon soul Torch
Hammer coral
Goldenrod Anacropora
Leptoseris
Pocillopora
Blue mushroom coral
Orange chalice coral

Fish
Clownfish pair

Parameters:
Salinity: 1.026
Nitrates: 8-10
Phosphates: 0??? (Salifert tests are so hard to read!)
dKH: 11.9
Calcium: 510
Magnesium: 1480 (Would like this to be 1600)
Temperature: 25 degrees C
pH: Don't test

I hope this extra tidbit helps

Keep them fed and you will be fine.

Make sure you have something to top off your water level as fluctuations in salinity will impact all of your chemistry.

 

[Dom]

My Alk is so high that it almost never dips below 10 WITH water changes. However, I have never tested Alk without doing water changes. I might do a one month experiment on this. Calcium is easy for me to maintain because I dose it every 3 weeks. Also, it has never ever dipped below 470 on calcium even without water changes. When I get my ATO, I will add a little bit of baking soda to raise the Alk.

Also, has anyone ever used the Kamoer ATO? I find it for sale at $105 CAD which is really cheap for an ATO. If anyone has experience with this ATO, please tell me. Otherwise, I will use the Tunze Osmolator Nano.

To top off, you can set up a temporary, gravity fed ATO.

A simple float valve connected to a 5 gallon bucket will do.

But as has already been mentioned, you must have someone inspect the tank weekly to be sure there aren’t any failures of any kind.

Maybe get someone from a local reef club to help out?

 

[exnisstech]

That ain’t no lie! I’m stressed about leaving my tank for a week.. I’m going on vacation in a couple months and it’s on auto pilot but still! Haha..

I use the tanks as an excuse not to vacation lol. Every time I have a failure of some sort I tell my Gal "see if we had been out of town everything would have been dead when we returned" It works but now I need to figure out how to get her to vacation without me

 

[costaricareef]

Get your tank on autopilot months before your trip. If you do it a week or two before, it won't work. 1) ATO, 2) Controller, 3) All/Ca dosing, 4) AWCs, 5) Feeders, 6) fans/heaters/chillers, 7) lights schedule, 8) refugium, etc, etc. With you there, you can better understand that even with EVERYTHING on autopilot, it's a question of luck when something needs human intervention. For two months you need a responsible person monitoring and looking in. I have left my tank by itself for 16 days and had to call a friend to solve some issues on my second day!!!!

 

[Joe31415]

I know this comes off as harsh, but if you're asking if you need an ATO, I don't think you have the experience required, nor do I think your tank is matured enough to go 2 months unsupervised.

Yes, you need an ATO. Yes you need to do water changes. There's lots of options for both and if you have the time, you'd be wise to get them started now so you're not trying to figure it out a few days before you leave.
But, even then, you're going to run into problems, like the ATO and fresh salt water tanks running dry.

And be careful trying to automate refilling an ATO. A lot of people considering doing this (or actually do it). But IMO it's a bad idea. If your ATO gets stuck on, you'll have a mess if it empties your reservoir into the tank, but you'll have a much, much bigger mess if it's able to keep going and going until you happen to notice it.

TLDR, don't leave your tank unattended for two months.