# Best Practice for High Tech Planted Tank When going on Vacation?



## kyle2088 (Jun 28, 2005)

If you are going on vactaion (or unable to meet your plants needs do to ther circumstances )for 1 week what is the best practice to avoid coming home to a Tank full of Algae?

I was recently without power for 5 days and plants did fine. No light, no filter, no liquid Ferts , no co2, temps dropped to under 40 Deg in Canada insid ethe house. Fish died, Power went back on 5 days later and plants grew with avengance.

Other times I have gone away for 5 days and not done the Liquid Ferts but kept filter on, co2 on lights on and come back to Algae overtaking the tank. Im guessing co2 lights and some ferts were imbalanced?

What are your practices and what do you find works best?


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## niko (Jan 28, 2004)

EI works best. It provides everything your tank needs - ferts, light, CO2, and water changes to keep it clean.

Just fertlize well, keep the CO2 as high as you can, and change 50% of the water once a week. The algae has no chance because the plants will grow very well.

That is the advice you will get on any forum. I consider it very primitive but it is the only advice you will get. When you have any problems the solution is always the same - what you read above. You be the judge if that makes any sense.

If you look at your experience with the 5 day power outage you may suppose that there are better ways to run a planted tank which allow you to never worry about leaving it alone for days, even weeks. In your example the 40F temperature stopped everything from growing (and yes, fish will die at that temp). But do remember that dumping ferts in your water is not the only way and certainly not the best.


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## Darkcobra (Nov 23, 2009)

If you follow the normal schedule of dosing macros and micros on alternate days, then each time you dose something, you're adding enough for two days.

By doing a supplemental 50% water change right before you leave to reset levels, then double-dosing macros AND micros immediately after, you're adding enough for four days; without causing too severe a spike. Many EI tanks drift towards similarly high nutrient levels later in the week anyway. The extra water change is to make sure you're not double-dosing on top of that. This I've done, and can vouch for as causing no issues. With a caveat, described later.

Then by also cutting light intensity or photoperiod in half, you cut plant consumption equally - so you have enough for eight days, thus fulfilling your criteria. This I haven't done, but I suspect cutting photoperiod would work better.

The caveat: CO2 must stay on at night. Otherwise the pH may climb enough to break the EDTA chelation in CSM+B or whatever trace mix you're using, rendering the micros unusable before the vacation is up.

Alternately, you could use an automatic fish feeder, loaded with dry ferts.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot. When you get home, do another water change and single-dose macros AND micros. Then resume normal schedule, beginning with macros.


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## TropTrea (Jan 10, 2014)

I would not suspect 5 days would be a big change for too much negative to happen. If you have a automatic dosing set up then let everything run normal. Otherwise I would reduce the timing of the lights as well as decrease the CO2 flow. 

I had seen plants ship out of Tialand and something go wrong with the shipment and they arrived over a week late. This was wrapped in newspapers and plastic bags with no light for a week. 80% of the plants recovered. Your not doing anything that stressful on the plants.


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