Green Water - Vacation

["Daphne Freeman" <daphne_freeman at charter.net>]

Matthew asked about preventing algae outbreaks in his tank during vacations.

Just my two cents...

You already have someone coming in to feed.  It would be a bit much to ask
them to measure out and fertilize but what if you made up cups or some other
containers with each one containing everything for one dose and set them by
the tank?  Each time they feed, they pour in a cup.  When I took trips,  I
made up little foil packets of food for my neighbor to dump in.  This came
about after one trip when  I came home to what looked like a 5 gallon bucket
of food coating my tank!  We were both more comfortable with the packs :)

The other more reliable/more expensive option is to set up an auto-doser.
Automated Aquariums has several sizes of dosing pumps that are fairly
reasonably priced.  Mine are still in the box but I plan to set one up since
I never remember to dose mid-week.

Daphne