Plants on Vacation
Whether you’re cruising the Aegean or camping just down the road, here are seven tips to keep your aquatic plants healthy.
Summertime is often when we take a vacation and leave our planted tanks for a week or two. We take vacations to relax. Truth be told, however, we often really fret about our plants and fish in between the R&R.
As someone who leaves her tanks unattended for seven to 10 days twice a year (plus several trips of four or five days), I have learned over time what works best for me in maintaining my tanks during my absence.
Have realistic goals. Because you won’t be around to maintain your tank, make sure your expectations are realistic. Without regular trimming, feedings, front glass cleanings and the like, the tank is bound to look a bit on the ratty side upon your return. Understand this, and you won’t be disappointed when you first peer into the tank once you are back home.
What I always strive for is maintaining equilibrium as best as I can. This equates to nothing dying, no algae blooms and minimal work for me to get the tank back to pristine shape. None of us would expect our fish to look amazing after such an absence, so don’t expect the plants to look that way either.
Timers. I’m always an advocate for having lights on timers (takes the guesswork out of everything), and never is this more necessary than when you are away. I like to slightly reduce the duration of the lights being on when I am away, because I am not around to add liquid fertilizers and the plants grow a bit more slowly. I’d much rather come home to slightly paler red plants than to a tank full of green water.
Equipment. Don’t do any major equipment maintenance the night before your vacation. The best time to do a major filter cleaning is two or three days before your vacation, so that if anything isn’t quite right, you can fix it prior to your departure. If you wait until the last minute, and you are working on your tank at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night and the impeller breaks, guess what? There isn’t a pet store open to sell you a new one.
This is also true when replacing CO2 canisters or changing a DIY yeast solution. If tubing leaks, poor seals or other problems arise, then you won’t be around to prevent them from becoming major events.
Feedings. Many people think the best thing to do the day before a vacation is to pour a ton of nutrients into the tank in order to feed the plants “all week long.” This is not a good idea. Plants can’t take in more food than they need at any given time, so the added nutrients just contribute to buildup or worse (feed algae, etc.). If you remember our #1 goal (to maintain the tank in a reasonable condition), you will be more likely to avoid this common error.
Trimmings. I will trim plants that need it up to seven days before a trip. I don’t trim them any closer to my departure date than that, for several reasons. First, after trimming a plant, it will sometimes go a bit into shock — maybe not so drastically that you will notice it, but enough for the plant to shed a couple of leaves. If we are around, we can quickly remove these leaves from the water column.
However, if we are not around, this debris can easily clog the filter intake tubes and restrict water movement. In addition to lower water movement, this same plant matter begins to ruin the water quality as it breaks down. Attached to the filter intake, it thus deteriorates within the water column versus being sucked out of the tank and into the filter. Nitrate readings can begin to soar with all that organic matter breaking down right in the tank, especially with no water changes. For this reason, if you use a prefilter apparatus, I advocate removing it before your trip. Without a watchful eye, it can easily get clogged and create all kinds of havoc.
If I’m going to replant and/or move any plants, I do so two weeks prior to my trip. This way, I can be sure the plants will not become uprooted, float at the surface and around the tank, and end up also getting sucked into the filter intake. With replantings completed two weeks in advance, I can be sure that my plants’ roots take hold to keep it in place while I’m gone.
The dual system. As anyone who has been reading my column for a while knows, I am sort of obsessive when it comes to taking action that prevents problems versus just waiting for problems to occur and then fixing them. Although I’ve never been in the Boy Scouts, my motto is also “Be prepared!” This is why on a daily basis, I have a dual system on nearly all of my tanks, which is what I strongly recommend if you’re going on vacation.
Peer into any one of my show tanks, and you’ll think you are seeing double. In fact, you are! Two filters. Two heaters. Two sets of lights. Even two CO2 units. I have everything set so that the total output of the equipment equals my ultimate goal. For example, rather than use one 400-watt heater, I use two 200-watt heaters. Instead of one light fixture with four 65-watt bulbs, I will use two strips with each housing two 65-watt bulbs. My two CO2 units each disseminate half of the tank’s total CO2 need. Used together, they put out enough CO2 to make my plants flourish.
Why this “two of everything” strategy? Mostly, it’s in response to situations that have occurred while I was away, including filters that got clogged, heaters that failed and one time when my CO2 canister simply failed for no apparent reason. I came home from a trip to Italy to find my favorite show tank absolutely covered in blue/green algae. I could not recognize a singe plant; all of them were covered in black slime. It was so bad that it took a month of tedious cleanings to get the tank to stabilize.
Encouraged by readers to share, I wrote an article for my column about how I turned that tank around (hint: lots and lots of work), and I became a big fan of equipment duplicity at the same time.
Peace of mind. Should you or shouldn’t you have someone “plant sit” your tank while you are gone? This depends on how much that person really knows about planted tanks. As the saying goes, “Sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous thing.”
A friend of mine had his wife care for his tank while he was on a week-long trip. She knew to only feed specific amounts of food to the fish. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize her fingers often had soap, body lotion or perfume on them and that she was putting these substances into the tank with each feeding. Some of the fish died, but because she wasn’t really “into” the hobby, she wasn’t paying attention to the tanks and didn’t even realize it. So, she kept feeding the (dead) fish until more and more died. When my friend returned from his business trip his fish were dead, there was a ton of food laying on the bottom of the tank, the water was green and the plants were covered in algae.
If you have a hobbyist friend who isn’t going to turn the tank lights on to keep watching the fish (and then forget to turn them off), or put their hands in the tank to remove a floating twig and unintentionally poison the water, or add some houseplant fertilizer to surprise you with really green plants, etc., then have them look in on your tank every couple of days if it gives you peace of mind. Personally, I’ve never done it. And while I did have that awful blue/green algae mess, I’ve never lost fish nor had a plant fail to the point where I couldn’t bring it back. I have no one look in on my tanks, no one feed my fish and no one do water changes. Yes, my tanks look ratty after a week of neglect, but I’d much rather have a temporary eyesore than lots of tears from a loss.
Travel and vacations should be fun. With some simple precautionary steps, the memories won’t be spoiled when you get back home.