Leaving shrimp for holidays

Leaving aquariums whilst on holidays

Happy New Year! Hopefully 2018 is the year of great shrimp breeding.
I went away for a short 10 day holiday over Christmas and was slightly worried about leaving the shrimp rack unattended for so long over summer so I made sure I did a few things to prepare.
Even though my shrimp rack is hooked up to the chiller, the garage can heat up a fair bit especially when the lights are on and the chiller is running, putting more heat into the room. Usually when I am home I leave the door open in the evenings for a couple of hours and it would cool down a few degrees.
This was my main concern so I tried to insulate the shed door as the sun hits the dark door in the morning which heats up the room. I made sure to do this a week before I left to see if it would work Unfortunately this had a negative affect, as during the night it would hold all the heat in as there is little ventilation. I ended up removing the insulation as I felt it held more heat in over night than the small amount it kept out in the mornings when the sun hits the door.

How to keep your fish tank cool in summer

Lighting plays a big part of what heat is going into the water as it increases the temperature around the tank. This will vary according to the lighting type and power. The heat output of lights with equivalent lumen values, which is a measure of the brightness of the light, will vary drastically with LED putting out 20% of the heat of fluorescent light.
To minimise the heat in the garage I changed the lighting schedule so they would be on in the nights when it was cooler and I wouldn't be there to look into the tanks anyway.
I also removed all the lids as evaporation is a method of heat loss for a fish tank and having an open top tank with good surface agitation will ensure maximum evaporation.

The rack is set up to auto top up any evaporation with pure reverse osmosis water, which means that I don't have to worry about my sump running dry when I was away.

When I have gone on holidays in the past with individual aquariums. I would usually perform a water change in the week preceding the holiday and overfill the aquarium above where I would normally have it running.

Feeding shrimp on short holidays

As all my tanks are very heavily planted and the stocking levels aren't too high, I wasn't worried about leaving them without feeding. I added an Indian almond leaf to each tank about a month before I went on holiday so it would have time to decompose and the micro-organism film to develop. The shrimp were all given a good feed each day for the few days before I left.

Baby shrimp everywhere

There were 3 berried blue bolts which were due to hatch whilst I was away and I was very pleased to see lots of little babies all through the tank when I got home. Both of the Crystal Red Shrimp which I moved into their own chamber are berried and there are lots of babies in the other CRS tanks.