AggieYen

It's me again - I'm so sorry I keep asking questions I was just wondering... my plan for my 5.5 gallon tank is to get 2 otos first, acclimatise them, and then get me a betta female. I've learnt from here that it's best to get otos before the betta? I'm going away for three weeks in about 3 weeks.. and knowing how delicate otos are, particularly in the first month, what kind of holiday care would you advise for them? My friends and relatives aren't as.. fish-loving as I am, so I don't think they'll be particularly supportive with the water changes and testing the water - they'll feed it, but they won't be traipsing to my place everyday to feed it vegies and take it out after a day. I'm considering waiting till next year after I get back from holidays before I get my otos, but I'm wondering what you guys do with your little otos when you're away?

P/s: The tank is cycled from previous fish.

Also - one quick question about feeding them vegies. I tried feeding a slice of zucchini to my previous fish once, and i left it in there for 12 hours, none of them tried it. Then when I took it out, it was rock hard - do you guys prepare/blanch/nuke/cook your cucumbers/zucchini before you put them in for the little ones?

Chief_waterchanger

We use fresh from the grocery store zucchini. Slice it, put it on a weight, toss it in, leave it overnight, our fish devour it.

I would wait until you get back to get the otos. In my opinion it would be bad form to get the fish knowing friends/family won't take care of the fish the way it needs to be taken care of, for a 3 week stretch of time.

When we go on vacation our friends feed our 100+ tanks, they know how to pull dead fish if we lose anything, and as far as waterchanges go we do a 50% as soon before leaving as possible, then do a 50% when we get back. We never go anywhere more than 2 weeks so everything is fine. Our tanks are so understocked though that it works out well for us, others may not want to try that method, as Dino (who is co-owner of the fishhouse) has 26 years fishkeeping experience and has mentored me well, so I know he knows what he is doing.

AggieYen

Yeah that's what I thought too... next year I may go travelling again at the end of the year.. sigh. I need more fish-loving friends in my local. And they say fish-keeping has the least commitment!! How little they know.

Thanks, chief. Do you and Dino sell your fish?

Chief_waterchanger

We do sell some of our fish, but sadly only to people inside the USA. We don't really care to go through the inspection of our facilities and the hassle it involves to ship overseas.

Fishloving friends are a great help, but we just have caring family that helps. We have both my parents and Dino's parents trained to do the very basic care (feeding and waterchanges), and always are a phone-call away from them when we are gone.