How To Care For Your Fish While You are Away
How To Care For Your Fish While You’re Away
It’s time to pack your bags for that well-deserved vacation again. But instead of relishing delicious thoughts of a wonderful holiday, most pet owners often worry about leaving their pets behind. Dogs and cats can be sent to pet hotels or boarding homes. But fish?
Moving fish is a complicated process, and highly stressful for them too. Your best alternative is to keep your fish at home, and get a pet-sitter to look in on them. Having said, you might not need one at all. It all depends on the length of your vacation.
Short Vacation: Contrary to what you may believe, healthy fish can go a week without food. If you’re going away for the weekend, don’t even bother getting someone to feed them. Fry, on the other hand, require regular and more frequent feeding.
Long Vacation: If you are going away on a long vacation, there are two options you could choose from. Either you buy an electronic automatic fish feeder that dispenses just the right amount of food daily or elect a reliable friend or relative or hire a pet-sitter as your fish feeder.
Tips On Giving Fish Feeding Instruction To Your Pet-sitte
It is important that your fish helper—be it friends or pet-sitter—does not overfeed the fish for whatever reason. Excessive food can lead to bacterial build up, overworking your filter and thereby wiping out your entire tank. Separate the right amount of food into individual packages to take out the guesswork.
Remind them—and yourself, after you come back—that even if your fish have gone without food for a few days, they still shouldn’t be fed more than their standard servings to “make up” for the days they had gone without.
Choose the Right Fish Food When Using Automatic Fish Feeder
If you decide to go with the automatic fish feeder, make sure you choose “fast” dissolving fish food as some slow-dissolving fish food can upset the pH level of the water, leaving you with a mess and presenting a whole new set of problems when your return.
You can’t prevent the filter from choking or the heater from failing. But you can most certainly try your best to ensure it doesn’t happen.
Things To Do and Avoid Before You Leave
Give all tank equipment a thorough look through. Replace any suspect equipment a few weeks in advance to ensure the substitute works. Don’t wait till the last possible minute to do so, or your fish will be struggling to cope with stress while you’re away.
Adding new fishes should be avoided for at least a month before you go away. This is to prevent new diseases from being introduced into the water, which may take time to discover and treat.
Pet-sitting is a heavy responsibility. For all it’s worth, your efforts above may be for nought. In case of emergencies, give your pet-sitter (and yourself) some peace of mind by leaving behind a number to call: yours, the fish store’s, or a fish expert’s whose advice you trust.
