TANK TIPS & TRICKS

Preparing To
Article and Images By Richard Ross

Leave Your Tank

or many reef hobbyists, the idea of leaving their tank for even just a weekend lls them with dread, while the idea of going on vacation for one, two or even three weeks induces a semi catatonic state. However, summer vacations and holiday excursions with family are, for many, a necessary part of life. You will likely be leaving your reef tank alone or in someone elses care for long periods of time. This article will look at some strategies for safely leaving your reef tank while you enjoy your time away.
PLAN IN ADVANCE This is THE major piece of advice I give regarding vacations away from your tank. Dont expect to prep the tank for your two week trip the day before you leave. That is the recipe for a very bad outcome. If you take only one thing away from this article, I hope its the idea of taking the necessary time to plan in advance for your tanks safety during your trip.

BECOME FRIENDS WITH THE WORST CASE SCENARIO Before a three week trip, my wife gave me what I feel was some of the best advice ever regarding my reef; assume everything is going to die. Once you come to grips with the idea that you may come home from your trip to coral soup, enjoying your vacation actually becomes easier because you worry less about the potential disaster. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but instead of worrying that the worst will happen, you have already accepted that the worst could happen and you can relax. Since you know that you may come home to disaster, it makes sense to prepare for disaster by making sure many people have frags of all the corals you hold dear. That way, if the worst really does happen, you can at least get back frags of your treasured corals. Naturally, this needs to be done well in advance of your vacation to ensure that the corals have successfully transitioned to their new environments. That said, the goal here is to prevent bad things from happening, so lets talk about that.

No one wants to return home to this, so be prepared!

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HOUSE SITTER, TANK SITTER OR MAINTENANCE COMPANY Having a house sitter stay while you are gone provides some peace of mind. The tank is getting checked daily, fed daily and most importantly, there is someone who can leave you voice or email messages about the status of the tank. It really is very nice to nally get to email while away, and see a message that all is well. If your house sitter is unfamiliar with reef keeping, have them over for dinner a week or so before you are leaving to give them a walk through of your system. You may consider lending them a good book on reef keeping. If you cant get a house sitter, have a fellow reef club member tank sit for you. They can check on the tank every other day or so and give you all the updates you need. The extra benet here is that they know what they are doing, so if something goes wrong, they should know how to x it. While having friends watch your system is ne, there is something about paying someone that can make it easier to ask them to do menial tasks like water tests and water changes. You can hire a tank maintenance service to check on your tank a few times while you are away, as well as do any of the heavy lifting regular maintenance that needs to be done like cleaning lters and water changes. I personally like a combination of all three. Someone stays at the house, reeng friends drop by every few days (and are on call if the house sitter has a problem), and a maintenance service comes by weekly to check on everything. The quality of the house sitter, tank sitter and maintenance company is important. You want to nd quality, detail oriented people who you trust to pay attention and do the right things while you are gone. A bad house/tank sitter can ruin your trip because you will be worried they are not keeping up your tank properly. Remember the part about planning in advance? Its critical here. Find people you trust to help while you are gone. Do this a month or more before you plan on leaving. I think it is our job to make our systems as stable, as easy to understand, and as easy to maintain as possible for the people we are trusting to care for them while we are gone. Anything you can do to make their lives easier will not only help them (and thus your tank) if something goes wrong, but will make them feel good about helping you again in the future. Write up a brief description of your system and what regular maintenance is required while youre gone. Tape a copy, with emergency phone numbers in big bold text, to the tank. While you are at it, post a copy of that list (maybe minus the phone numbers) on your personal website or on your reef clubs local forum so the information is easy for people to nd. Let everyone in your reef club know you are leaving, and give the people taking care of your tank your access to the reef club forum so they can sign on and ask any questions they may have.

ADVANCE PLANNING Do a system wide maintenance at least three weeks before you leave. When you tweak your system, there are sure to be glitches that may not be immediately noticeable or that youre used to compensating for under-tightened clamps, pumps that fail to restart, dosing pump malfunctions, etc. Since it is your system, you are in the best position to correct these potential problems. For instance, seeing that something looks wrong, hearing pumps that sound different, or noticing that timers or top off systems arent working properly are all issues that should be addressed before you turn your system over to someone elses care. I recommend a three week lead time for this process because the closer you get to actually going on your trip, the more distracted you become, so three weeks should give you plenty of time to still have brain power to focus on your reef. Clean your return pumps/closed loop pumps both inside and out. Rell and clean your calcium reactor and CO2 tank. Soak any oat switches in vinegar to make sure they have nothing built up on them that might cause them to stick open or closed. Clean your overow teeth and any strainers or lter material. Clean and calibrate any controllers or probes. Harvest your macroalgae. Clean your lights. Clean and charge any reactors. Stock up on food for your animals. Have a reservoir of saltwater on hand, circulating, heated, and ready to use in case an emergency 2/19/09 2:37 needed. 1 NanoMag1/4RHM.qxd:Layout 1 water change is PM Page

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TANK TIPS & TRICKS

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Do not add any new equipment or livestock to your system for at least a month before you will be leaving. We have all had the experience of adding a new pump, powerhead or top off system to a tank, with the installation going smoothly and quickly only to nd a week or two later something goes horribly, horribly wrong. So, add it and troubleshoot it way in advance of your departure. This is especially true for livestock additions where aggression or disease issues may not be apparent until after youre already gone. Have spares of critical equipment; return pump, water motion devices, heaters, light bulbs etc... so if something important breaks, the people watching your tank can swap it out. If your return pump is hard plumbed, make sure the back up pump has all the proper ttings to make it fast and easy to put in place. Simulate a power outage to see what will actually happen to your tank in an emergency situation. Turn off all power to your system. Did the sump overow? Did the water level in the tank drop too far, exposing corals to the air? Then, restore power and make sure everything starts back up properly. If there are any issues in the simulation, you can x them if possible or at the very least, let the people who are going to be taking care of your tank know what to be on the lookout for in case the power goes off. LABEL EVERYTHING If you havent done this already, get to it. Trouble shooting your system over the phone or via email becomes much easier if the person looking at your system can identify all of your equipment easily. Label every piece of equipment with easy to read labels. Label every cord with cord labels. Even better, use and label a dj power panel (which is basically a strip plug with switches for each outlet) so whoever is working on your tank can simply ip a switch instead of hunting for a plug. Label all your timers and controllers. Label the location of all GFCIs (Ground Fault Circuit interruptors) so if they trip, the people taking care of your system can nd and reset them. While you are at it, drawing up a schematic of your system can also be very helpful in an emergency for someone unfamiliar with your specic system. PREPARE ANY FROZEN FOOD/ADD AN AUTOMATIC FEEDER Using deli containers or plastic bags, prepare and portion out any frozen foods. With a marker, write please feed on (enter date here). This way, you know your reef is being fed the way you want it to be fed and it makes things easier for the person feeding your tank. Also, a number of plastic daily pill holders, marked with dates, make it easy to prepare a series of different daily feedings. If you feed ake or pellets, add an auto feeder to the system (again, allow at least a month for troubleshooting!). It seems to me that this is precisely what technology is for ease and peace of mind. AUTOMATE Automation is a polarizing idea in our hobby some people love it, some hate it. Either way, few can deny the utility of automation when the owner of the system is away. So, consider automating where

you can, for the time you are away. Lights can be on timers. Reliable auto top off (dual oat switches!) with a large reservoir of make up water should be available. Install auto feeders as mentioned above. Add a calcium reactor, or if you are dosing 2-part Calcium and Alkalinity supplements or Kalkwasser, install a dosing pump. Add a chiller and/or a fan triggered by temperature controllers to help deal with the possibility of the tank over heating. If the power does go out, the dissolved oxygen levels in your tank water can quickly be depleted, stressing or even killing your animals. Battery operated air pumps that turn on in the event of a power outage are cheap, reliable and easy to install. Many of the popular water motion devices now have optional battery backups, so look into those. You can also go old school and add a small powerhead near the surface, plugged into a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) that will power the pump when the main power goes out. Each of these examples of automation could be an article in itself, so please do some research as to what the current best methods of implementation may be before going forward. And again, install any automation at least 4 weeks before you leave on your trip to be sure it is functioning properly! Have a great trip!

Clearly written labels on a dj power panel takes the guesswork out of troubleshooting.

Autofeeders can be very convenient but must be installed and used carefully.

Dual stage controllers will prevent heaters and chillers from running simultaneously.

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Don't miss RHM sponsored Reef-A-Palooza October 24 25. www.reefapalooza.org