Feeding while away

[norto]

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to feed 28 day free swimming fry as well as some older pairs over the christmas period i will be away for about 4 days. I will be doing a full water change just before we leave.
Norto.

[Merrilyn]

Your fry are going to be a problem, no matter what you feed them. They need constant water changes.

One of those battery operated auto feeders will take care of the feeding while you are away.

Trial it for a few days before you have to leave, to get it to feed just the right amount. I use the Eheim one, but a lot of the other brands are good too.

[mistakes r crucial]

Hi Norto

I would never disagree with the Lady R but because of the water situation we now change water far less than we used to. There is no doubt that changing water every day has its benefits with fry but we have not noticed any significant difference in cutting back to every 2-3 days. But there again, you have to make sure your filtration is on top of the job, it really is the key.
MAC

[norto]

Thanks lady red and Mac the only drama I have with the auto feeders is that you have to feed just dry food don't you? Mac I have been doing exactly what you said with the water changes because of the water situation and they have been going along pretty good , I know it is not ideal but I live out of town so I have no choice.
Norto.

[mistakes r crucial]

No it's not ideal but we discussed the situation at great length and running the amount of water we do we came to the conclusion that changing even 50% per day and going through over 20,000 litres of water a week was immoral and irresponsible. We've gone the other way and spent a fair bit of money on filtration and it's working well, our water is excellent and we haven't noticed much of a difference at all although I'm sure there is some.

Unfortunately water is an issue here in Australia and as far as I see it it is only going to get worse in the forseeable future. I think any of us with more than a couple of thousand litres will have to put our thinking caps on shortly or we just might get a tap on the shoulder from the powers that be.
MAC

[samir]

MAC do you guys use a denitrator ??

[mistakes r crucial]

No we don't Samir, we have 400 litre sumps with 5 different trays of media and a degassing chamber 5 tubs high sat on each sump all with media in them. They took an eternity to cycle because of the amount of media which caused us a few hassles but it was worth the wait. I reckon we could throw almost anything at them these days and they would cope. We can still improve them with a 5 micron cartridge sat in front of the sump and some professional UV's but we're not far off, it's just a case of another 2 grand per system, ho hum!
MAC

[norto]

Yeah I know where your coming from MAC I run a spring water bottling facility and we are looking very closely at our source at the moment while it has not looked like stopping yet if things don't start changing in regard to rainfall soon we may have a problem in the future years. I think also we don't give our fish enough credit I have a discus here about 1 inch in size and you would not believe some of the things it has been through yet it is still charging on.
Norto.

[Bill T]

What is a denitrator?

[Nathan]

What is a denitrator?

its a special filter that is designed to keep your nitrates down, where normal filters convert ammonia to nitrates an the only way to get rid of them is through a w/c where as if you have this special filter it help filter out nitrates.

[FishLover]

A denitrator, also known as a denitrifier, is a biological filter that removes nitrate (NO3) from the aquarium. A denitrator filter uses anaerobic bacteria to break down nitrate into nitrogen gas (N2), which escapes into the atmosphere, the result is nitrate free effluent. The basic design is to use a long tube(>20feet) to take out the oxgen in the water before it reaches the filter media, which has the anaerobic batceria.

Nothing can replace the water change.