Holiday Feeding

I will be away for a week and have got no one to feed fish. I did buy an automatic feeder but with only 4 (maybe by the time i go away this might not work. Any suggestions?

Test the auto feeder before you go away - put it on the tank and see if dispenses the food properly. Sometimes they drop all the food in one go, other times dampness gets in and the food does all sticky and won't come out.

Which feeder do you have?

It's the Juwel autofeeder. I am using micro pellets which I understand are less likely to clog together.

The one with the airline connector? Use this if you can.

How much will it feed on its minimum setting?

No, one without the air line. Will test in next couple of days to see how much it drops.

I also have an auto-feeder (Fishmate, without airline, in my case). I concur with the previous advice to test it out beforehand, ideally for a couple of days if you can - this gives a chance to address any issues that you might find. For example, I have to adjust mine in such a way that it's about to dispense food, otherwise it misses the first feed.

[Sorry, B - our posts overlapped.]

We've just completed a test of a two week absence using Tetramin 7-Day Holiday Blocks.

Water tests after week 1 showed slightly raised NO₃, up from 5ppm at the start of the week to 15ppm.  Everything else absolutely normal.


Before today's water change, NO₂ was up to 0.25ppm (not expected) and NO₃ up from 15 to 40ppm (expected).
Our normal 20% water change brought everything back to normal, i.e. NO₂ and NO₃, back to zero and 5ppm respectively.

According to Tetra, for our number of fish, size of tank and time we were "away", we were just on the border between using 1 or 2 blocks.  Having used Tetramin Weekend Holiday Sticks a couple of times now, Tetra seem to err on the side of overfeeding.  In this test case, we only used 1 block.  At the end of the 2 week trial only about 1/4 of the block had gone.

The fish seemed to be a bit on the hungry side but they all look very healthy and happy.  Even all the very shy Corydoras have taken to coming out in the evening to gaze out of the front of the tank


Overall, we're very happy and relieved that the test has worked out well.  We can now go away for real with some level of confidence that the fish will be OK.
 

@fcmf
 
No problem.  I wasn't sure which thread this should have been posted to, fish feeding or product reviews.  I'll leave it to you to move or copy it elsewhere as appropriate.