[Avid_aquarist]

i go to college here but will be visiting my family for 3 weeks near christmas... im not sure what i will do with the livestock in my FOWLR.

my tank specs are: 55 gal glass tank, CPR BakPak, HOB power filter, CA 800 power head, about 50 lbs of Live rock. Coral Banded Shrimp, 4 Bumble bee shrimp, and some small fish.

the fish are local caught so i will probably release them,same with the shrimp. however, live rock is illegal to collect, or ship here, so if i leave all my good rock out to dry, all my new corraline, bacterial colonies, and various other critters will die off. it took quite a while to gather that much acceptable rock legally and it took quite a while to get that much growth.

do you think i would have any problems if i left the liverock in? i could keep the powerfilter running while i was away. its been running for the last few months withought any problems. ive decided not to leave the BakPak on because ive caught the seals leaking once and the cup would just overflow, but i could remove the Mj 1200 and just run the the powerfilter and the both the powerheads for circulation.

any suggestions?

[Samper]

Can you not get someone to come over and take care of it atleast once a week? It'd be small stuff like top off water and empty skimmer cup.

[Ninong]

It is usually considered unethical to release captive fish back to the wild even when you are returning them to their native waters. In your case, assuming that absolutely everything in your tank was collected locally, it would seem to be less of an ethical issue. The problem arises when livestock (including live rock) is collected from various regions and placed together in an aquarium. Removing anything from such an aquarium and returning it to the wild could introduce pathogens unknown in that area.

Too bad you don't have some sort of automatic water top-off system to replace evaporation while you're gone. That and an automatic feeder to feed the fish would be all you would need to keep things going for three weeks, assuming no mechanical failures. The alternative would be to make up sufficient freshwater for top-off in advance and have someone come over a couple times a week to add water and feed the fish. You could run the tank for three weeks without the skimmer, just the filter. Even if your nitrates climb above 100 ppm, you're not going to have a problem with your particular livestock.