Starting tomorrow, I will be housesitting for my mother-in-law for a week. I know my fish will be fine without being fed, although I had planned to come home and feed them once every two or three days. My question is on my empty tank. I established a fishless cycle and have been feeding ammonia daily until I find the right fish for the tank. Do I need to come home and put ammonia in daily or will it survive on every 2-3 days? Oh, and don't worry about the fishies, I did an 80% change on their water today and plan another for tomorrow just so I can be sure they have very clean water before I leave them unattended.

Hello
The fishless cycle should be fine feeding it every 2 - 3 days. When I was keeping my tank empty, I fed it every other day.


Debbie

I did the same thing when I was using ammonia to keep a tank cycled while it was empty. I "fed" the tank every 2-3 days and it worked fine.

Thanks for the replies. I figured it would probably be fine. I had to replant all of my live plants from my goldfish tank this morning. I hadn't thought about them not getting much light at all for a week so I moved them into a 5 gallon in my daughter's room. That tank gets plenty of light filtered through white curtains. Now my goldfish tank looks so empty. I just have this horrible nightmare that I'll come back home in a couple of days to crashed cycles and all sorts of problems. I need to stop being so paranoid.

I ended up coming home nearly everyday anyway. I hadn't even thought about the temperature getting too high with noone in the house to turn on the air. My husband's not too happy about it, but I came over and turned on the air conditioner for them every day we were there.