How do you care for the ornamental fish you keep when you are away from home for more than 10 days?

Many fish lovers will encounter a problem: they have to leave their place for many days because of some things, and their ornamental fish are left unattended, how to do this?

Generally speaking, if you are away for two or three days, you don't have to worry about your fish tank, but if you are away for more than a week or even ten or twenty days, you will be very worried about your ornamental fish. Whenever you get home, you always rush to the tank with apprehension to check the situation.

In this article, let's discuss this topic: how to take care of your ornamental fish when you are away from home for many days?

The first problem that fish lovers worry about is whether the fish will starve to death.

When you are away from home, it means you can't feed your fish for a long time, so you are worried that they will die of hunger. To solve this problem, some fish lovers bought automatic feeders. The automatic feeder is a relatively mature product, both in online stores and physical stores can easily buy, the price is not expensive, so it is very popular among fish lovers, some do not travel a lot of fish lovers also bought, the purpose is to achieve a fixed point, quantitative feeding. The advantages of this product are really obvious, I will not say more, usually use, beneficial and harmless.

However, the automatic feeder is not suitable for use during business trips for two reasons.

The first reason.

Feeding and water change are a good pair of inseparable brothers, more feeding means more water change, because the feed put into the tank, after fish digestion, bacterial decomposition, and filter system processing, although degraded into low toxic nitrate, nitrate can not be stripped from the water body.

Some fishermen found that many blisters gathered around the outlet of the fish tank filter, these blisters are slow to break, and the reason is that there are too many nutrients in the water body, which is commonly known as the water is too fat. These surplus nutrients stored in the water body, although not immediately a threat to fish life, are certainly not conducive to fish health, in addition, too fat water will breed a lot of bacteria, and over time, the fish will be sick, so fish do not change the water is just a legend, some fish lovers pursue not to change the water, I think there is no need for this.

We can use automatic feeders instead of people to feed the fish, but can not achieve automatic water changes. Only feeding without water change will lead to the water in the tank getting fatter and fatter, and the water quality will be corrupted from quantity to quality.

The second reason why I don't recommend using the automatic feeder during a business trip is: if the automatic feeder fails to work during a business trip, and the fish food in the feeder is thrown into the tank, it will be an accident. Of course, the probability of this happening is very small, but it does happen. But luckily, he put a small monitor in the fish room and immediately let his parents take the spare key and open the door to get the fish food out, and the fish were fine.

The fish will not be fed for a few days or ten days on a business trip? I tell you from ten years of experience: no problem at all, not only will the fish not be starved to death, you will find yourself with an air tank when you return.

I stop feeding my fish every winter, a few days without feeding is a regular operation, and every year I visit friends and relatives at Spring Festival, more than a week is the minimum time, I don't have an automatic feeder for my tank. Every time I come back, the fish are fine, and the water quality is especially clear, because the organic matter in the water is reduced after the food stop, and the filtration system is running as usual, so the water quality becomes clear naturally.

Fish lovers do not have to worry about the fish will starve to death, fish in nature, are not every day fed to eat, and eat the last meal without the next meal which is their natural state because the fish were bred to live a life of fixed meals.

Some fish lovers love to fish, in addition to feeding them finished feed, but also feed red worms, shrimp, and egg yolk, lest they malnutrition. In the spring and autumn, fish lovers start to fatten up, especially friends who keep goldfish, they like to keep the fish fat and look a little cute. After fattening the fish, and storing enough fat, it is impossible to be starved alive. In addition, algae plants in the tank can also be used as food for fish, and they are still purely natural and pollution-free plants that can be used as fish food during business trips.

So, what should I pay attention to while away from home?

First, do not feed. The previous article said so much, are talking about this.

Second, clean the filter cotton.

Especially the filter is not designed to prevent overflow, but also to remember to clean the filter cotton before the trip because if the filter cotton is not cleaned for a long time, it will be clogged, the percolation of water is too slow, the water will overflow to the filter box outside. This is something I know firsthand. I previously had a drip filter box, overflow many times, because of this, I replaced a filter box with an overflow prevention port, but once the filter cotton do not know the reason for covering the overflow prevention port, the water overflowed in the middle of the night, the overflow of water to the balcony to get all wet, the key is the socket is placed under the filter box, the water showered on the socket, resulting in a short circuit system, fortunately, there was no accident, but later thought Still quite afraid, so I have been quite concerned about this matter, often subconsciously check the filter cotton. I remind fishermen here to pay attention to, before the trip, first wash the filter cotton, in addition, the socket as high as possible, as far as possible to avoid being drenched in water, so as not to cause circuit failure.

Third, change more water.

It doesn't matter if the fish don't eat anything, but bad water quality will kill the fish. So, before you travel, change as much water as possible, of course, you can't change the water in the whole tank at once, or you should follow the note of water change, change more times, don't change too much water each time, and trap the water before changing. I have emphasized all these in my previous video. The purpose of more water changes is to dilute the toxic substances in the water, to prevent the inability to change the water during business trips, toxic substances accumulate too much and threaten the lives of fish.

Fourth, clean up the fish feces and food residue, the tank is paved with bottom sand, you can use a sand washer to clean the bottom sand and clean up the dirty stuff in the tank. The purpose is the same as the third point, which is to prevent too much organic matter in the water and to reduce the production of toxic substances such as ammonia nitrogen, and nitrite as much as possible.

Fifth, check the water pump, clean out the dirty stuff in the water inlet of the pump, clean out the hair on the rotor of the pump, and other things to make sure the pump is working properly. Once the pump stops running, the fish in the tank will be in bad luck.

Finally, if you have the conditions, you can install a monitoring video, this kind of thing is now very popular, not expensive, and easy to use, through the cell phone APP you can see the things within the monitoring in real-time, so you can see the fish tank remotely, in case of an emergency, you can come back in time, or let the relatives with keys help deal with the home.

Well, in this article we will share so much, there may be omissions, welcome to discuss and add them in the comments section.