What To Do With Your Tropical Fish When You Go On Holiday

I recently went away for a week to another country (Gran Canaria if you are asking!) and when booking your holiday you might not necessarily think about what you will be doing with your fish during your vacation.

Here are a few options and ideas which you could consider:

Nothing

Yes that’s right – nothing. Depending on the length of time you are planning on leaving the fish without feeding them and the type of fish you have it is possible to simply leave them without any food during your departure. If you keep cichlids which will graze on rocks such as the Tropheus Ikola or Yellow Lab, providing you have enough lighting to promote algae growth in the fish tank then leaving them for a week or 2 might be an option.

Automatic Fish Feeder

You can get automatic fish feeders which are normally battery powered. These will be on a timer and will dispense food in to the aquarium once or twice per day. There are various automatic fish feeders on the market and they all have their merits. It is a good idea to ensure, if it is under a hood for example that the condensation doesn’t get to the food and clog up the mechanism. Some fish feeders will have the option to plug an airline and air pump in to the to ensure their is always fresh air pumped in to them to prevent any clogging up.

Friendly Neighbour

Advisable only if your friendly neighbour is trustworthy and has experience of fish keeping. Without this knowledge they may read the fish swimming frantically up and down the glass as them being still hungry and over feed them. It is always best to under feed than over feed tropical fish.

Holiday feeding block

Not the ideal solution but you can get a holiday feeding block which is densely packed food and will disperse food over a period of time. These aren’t ideal due to only being designed for a small amount of fish and will often get eaten very early on in the period you are away so you run the risk of the fish gorging which can lead to bloat and over feeding.

Local Fish Store

If you get on well with the guys in your local fish store and are planning a holiday of longer than a couple of weeks then they may rent you a sump or holiday tank to you. The cost of this option is down to the fish store’s policy however you can be sure they will know how much and when to feed. You must consider the stress your fish might encounter with this and as such wouldn’t recommend doing this if you are away for less than 2 weeks. You can take a look at our local fish store review page to see where your local fish store is and see if they are able to help.

In summary there are a few options but it does come down to the type and quantity of fish you keep and duration of your holiday. If you consider that in the wild fish wouldn’t have a set meal time every day and will often go for some time without eating. If we take mouth brooding cichlids as an example, when they are carrying fry they probably won’t eat for 30 days and although they may look a bit thin over this time, it is a long time so 7-14 days probably won’t be an issue.

APPIP ERROR: amazonproducts[
TooManyRequests|The request was denied due to request throttling. Please verify the number of requests made per second to the Amazon Product Advertising API.
]