What to do with fertilization during holiday

[eagleray]

Hi All
Was wondering what you folks do when you are off on holidays?

Was thinking of filling up a large pail of water, dose it, use a small pump set on a timer. Everyday, the timer will come on for 1 min and pump in the dosed water into the main tank. Also acts as my auto top-up system

What do you think?

Are there are side effects of leaving the dosed water in the pail for 2 weeks?

any advise much appreciated

[juggler]

If you use the timer/pump method, won't it over flow the tank? Or when the pail is emptied of water and the pump tries to pump, it gets burnt out?

For me, I just set the light level to be lower to cut down evaporation. Other than that, I won't be dosing. I am sure the plants would still be quite OK after a week or two.

[Plantbrain]

Less light = less growth = less nutrient demand.

You can add water/fert's conservatively as well.

Both would give you a decent result.

Regards,
Tom Barr

[ranmasatome]

would it be advisable to dose everything that is needed for the week then leave for the holiday?

[|squee|]

I think that will not be good because you're suddenly overloading the system with a week's worth of nutrients, surely the plants can't react that fast?

[eagleray]

PlantBrain
Cutting back on the light seems like the most simple and good idea. What do you reduce it to? 6hrs ?

The other question on this is that since plant growth acts like filteration, would reduced growth = less "filteration"? a concern esp if there are mid to high fauna in the tank?

Juggler
Was also thinking of those problems of overflowing and such. So far with a low powered pump 5W and 1 min timer, still less than rate of evaporation per day for my tank. Was thinking of being kia su and rigging it up to a float switch so that it will not start to fill if the water level did not drop.

as to pail drying up ...i guess i just have to find a really big and ugly pail and leave it there. guess i would not be at home to look at it :>

[ranmasatome]

Are we reducing the number of hours the plants recieve light or lowering the intensity and stick with the same amout of time????

[Plantbrain]

Less light will reduce the uptake of ferts, but if you are not adding any, the fish will supply the plants fairly well at low light.

Reduce the light intensity, not the photoperoid. Say 8 hours min to around 10-11 max.

Regards,
Tom Barr