Feeding while away

[benanddebbie]

Hi

JUST REALIZED I SHOULD HAVE POSTED HERE INSTEAD OF GENERAL SECTION. SO HERE IT IS AGAIN.....

We have a dilema and were wondering what you recommend.

We need to go away this Thursday and will be back Monday and obviously the fish need to be feed during this time. The dilema is that we have two tanks and only one automatic feeder. (we live remotely so NO chance of buying another auto feeder).

We have one 6 ft community tank and a 4 ft with a number of discus in. Any suggestions?

The only thing that we thought we might be able to use was a "holiday block" (star shaped white block of food). Has any one ever used one of these to feed discus? Would you put it in the community tank or the 4 ft discus?

Thanks in advance

[Merrilyn]

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Hi Ben and Debbie. Nice to hear from you again.

Your discus will actually cope quite well without food for 5 days. They are starved for at least that long when they are being shipped to Australia. It's not an ideal situation, but much better than having a neighbour coming in to feed them and possibly fouling the tank with too much food.

With that in mind, it is probably better to have the auto feeder on your community tank.

Feed the discus well for the week prior to leaving, and then do a waterchange the day of departure.

I'm not a big fan of those weekend feeder blocks. I think they are more trouble than they are worth.

Have a great holiday

[Proteus]

Vote no for feeder blocks ( = nasty)

They should be fine, and will love you even more when you get back

[sleepers]

I put a feeder block in my community tank and the water was gross and pastey when I got back, after only about 4-5 days. Also, I think one my swordtail just refused to eat from it anyway, and got really sick. And those are hardy community types, let alone a discus...

I vote no also...