Amnagrla

First off, I want to thank everybody here! I have all these books and talk to all the LFS people.. and it seems everyone in the world who has a fish are telling me what to do. HOWEVER, I am taking my advice pretty much from all of you! You guys are awesome. I have a non-important question for ya...

How reliable are those tablets I saw at Petco for like a 3-day feeding? or 7 days? etc. At some point this summer I will be gone for a week and I want to know if I can rely on those or give someone a key to come feed my fish?

kalika

If you are gone for a week only, then you won't really need anyone to come in and feed and I would avoid the tablets. SOmeone here may have a different opinion of them and by all means, take the advice you like. I find that they can pollute the water and it also depends on the kind of fish you have. Some fish will keep eating them until they explode. You can buy automatic feeders and it will dispense food over time by dropping it in the water once a day or so. Truly though, fish are cold blooded and can go along time without eating without suffering. A week is not a big deal. I like to spoil my fish and I personally hate to leave them for a week without feeding them so I sometimes will have someone come in once in the middle of that week to feed them and I measure out how much I want fed, into a small medicine cup. Nothing worse than coming home to way over fed fish that are sick or dead.

Anyway, that has gotten way too wordy, but truly you won't need to worry about them for only a week.

COBettaCouple

They could go the week without eating, but if you had someone reliable to feed them the right amount a day or 2 that week, I'd do that. If you want to let them go the week, maybe a little extra in the last meal before leaving wouldn't be too bad of an idea.

I'd mainly try to do a pwc before and after the week along with a cleaning if you have time to.

Gavinie

We just tried a 3 day tablet with our 4 danios and 3 tetras while away for the weekend. One of those danios is, shall we say, boss of her world, alpha fish, numero uno in the tank. Any interaction with the other fish have to first be negotiated through her on penalty of losing a forearm up to the elbow during the next cleaning.

We came back to find one fat danio and 6 frustrated fish very happy to see us. She had basically set up a 3 cm defensive perimeter around the tablet and was defending it against all comers. Only the largest of the other danios was even daring to make the occasional lighting raid when the alpha witch happened to be distracted by one of the others. We left the tablet in a while just for the amusement of watching the strategies the others had worked out. When we interfered and separated her from the community, the others rushed in and fed co-operatively.

In short, our single experience says if you have nice co-operative fish that are all going to hold hands and have a communal prayer before their meal, the competition for that single food source will create a survival of the witchiest situation.

Next time, we'll take the advice here and grit our teeth and try not to worry about a couple of days of agonizing starvation, or get a timed feeder before going away. No one we know has any experience with keeping a fish tank otherwise we might consider a sitter.