Home Alone

[b.reder]

I will be leaving town for ten days. My wife has no interest in my plecos. I have reduced the temp from 89 degrees F. to 80
degrees F. to lessen evaporation and feeding. What do others do under similar circumstances?

[Bas Pels]

mostly nothing

One could do a water change or clean the filters, but I´d suggest to do that a few days before leaving.

I wonder whether I would drop the temperature, and certainly this large amount: dropping the temperature is something the fish will have to adapt to, and adapting is something I would want to look over closely.

Fish are cold blooded, we, warm blooded mammals, spend some 90 % of what we eat to keeping warm. That is, you can compare fish not eating for 10 days with ourselves not eating for a whole day. Far from comfortable but nobody healthy will get ill from it.

Still, some plecos might be more sensitive, those are the algea and wood eating ones. Precicely the ones which will find a little of something in any tank, so these are the ones you will need to worry the least about

[Jools]

Yes, I agree. Clean filters three or four days before departure so as to be able to spot any issues, water changes and then just leave them.

Depends on the plecos, but you don’t need to hugely drop the temp and depending on room temperature it may not change evaporation that much.

Jools

[smitty]

I will do a water change, if one is to be done while I'm away. Other than that nothing special.

[TwoTankAmin]

I have a brother with no interest in fish and 20 tanks. 12 of these contain breeding plecos and their recent spawns or are for growing out their offspring. A few weekends a year I am away for 3 or 4 days. Since many of the younger plecos need to be fed daily, I have to make it as easy and idiot proof as possible to have him agree to feeding for me.

I make up packets of commercial food which I put into aluminum foil packet and place on top of the tanks. All he has to do is unfold the foil and drop in the food. When I need different tanks fed on different days, I may color code the food packets and will give him written instructions.

I would suggest you can feed your fish the day you leave (as long as no youngsters) and it would only require a few minutes of her time to feed at the halfway point. Then you will feed when you return.

Most plecos can handle dirty water for a while. So I would want to leave them in the cleanest water I can for them to start. I would also want to raise the water temp. up a couple of degrees to 82/83F.

[JamesFish]

I have used Fish mate F14 auto feeders in past as they have wheel sections to fill. Set them right and it can feed once a day for 10 days.

[b.reder]

Thanks to all for the advice. -Barry