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Re: Vacation



At 03:47 PM 4/8/2003, John T. Fitch wrote:

>I'm going to be away for two weeks and would appreciate some advice on how
>to prepare and take care of my 30-gal. tank during that time. I've looked
>through the archives, but haven't found anything very specific.

John,
I don't think anybody else took a swing at this so I will.

Assuming you have stabilized your fert dosings, why not use a medical IV 
pump? Mix the ferts to a standard solution of say 100ml per day, then use 
an IV pump to deliver 4.2 ml per hour into the tank? Then you just need a 2 
liter bottle with 1400 ml of fert solution as your supply.

Keep the lights on the same schedule, put the feeding on the automatic 
feeder you were planning to use, and now everything is automatic. You'll 
only miss one weekly water change, so compensate for that in your fert mix 
if you add additional doses at water changes.

Of course, your pH controller could choose day 2 of your vacation to stick 
on or off, but that's the risk you took when installing the thing anyway. 
There's way less to go wrong without it, but that's another debate for 
another day.

Here are some IV pumps on sale at eBay:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=iv+pump

If that link doesn't work, click here and type in "IV PUMP""

http://pages.ebay.com/search/items/basicsearch.html