you can buy an automatic fish feeder, they are fairly cheap and you can pick them up at your local pet store. and they will usually feed your fish every 12 or 24 hours… they work well… if it were me i would still give somone my key and ask them to check on my fish, and my house in general, and do stuff like get the mail…. but with the feeder your fish will do fine… they also sell extended feeders made specifically for that and you just drop them in the tank and the fish feed off them, and i dont know if they make one for 14 days, you can look. i know they make em for like 10…. good luck, hope it helps…
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December 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
if possible you should give your key to someone and have them come to your house and maintain your normal feeding schedule. you can't just dump a bunch of food in there, they will eat it and there won't be anything left!
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December 6th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
you can buy an automatic fish feeder, they are fairly cheap and you can pick them up at your local pet store. and they will usually feed your fish every 12 or 24 hours… they work well… if it were me i would still give somone my key and ask them to check on my fish, and my house in general, and do stuff like get the mail…. but with the feeder your fish will do fine… they also sell extended feeders made specifically for that and you just drop them in the tank and the fish feed off them, and i dont know if they make one for 14 days, you can look. i know they make em for like 10…. good luck, hope it helps…
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10+ years personal experience
December 6th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
when they are small they'll eat anything from bloodworms to flake food. when they are larger i would get them on a cichlid pellet and frozen food (krill, bloodworms, etc) diet you can also feed them the occasional live item (earth worms, chrickets, home bred live bearers) i would stay away from goldfish and store bought feeders, they tend to carry disease and little nutritional value
power feeding for about a week before hand, not feeding the day brfore you're leaving, and then doing a large water change before leaving is a good meathod… don't worry about getting them fed for the 2 weeks if you need have somebody come in ONCE and feed them LIGHTLY…
the worst thing you can do is leave them with someone inexerienced with fish and having them overfeed daily..
if you can get the cubed bloodworms, you can tellthem to feed 1 cube every other day.. underfeeding them causes WAY fewer problems (if any for just 2 weeks) than over feeding will…
the food boxed that dissolve in the water AREN'T reccomended by any one even close to an expert… they are mostly fillers and will foul your water when fed.
stores only sell them because people buy them.. not cause they are good to use
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December 6th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
If your fish are large enough then going for two weeks will not be a big problem (after all nobody goes around in the wild to feed them every day). If they are only abut an inch then I would trust someone to come in and feed them every other day or even every third day. Make sure to "bag" up a days worth of food in each bag and mark the days to be fed. This way the friend will not overfeed your fish and pollute the tank so as to kill or at least greatly weaken their immune system. Also you should do a water change before you go and one after you get home.
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Over 55 years in the aquarium hobby.
December 6th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
The best thing is to use a automatic feeder and let it be fed thrice a day with just sustainable (minimum) qty of cichlid flakes. Flakes because the fish is juvenile..
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December 6th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Do not bring in a friend who does not keep the same fish as you do, and who do not keep them healthy. They will follow your instructions to the letter, even if it causes them to pollute the tank with excess food and kill the fish!
A professional, (ask at your LFS) would be ok, but unless your JDs are fry, they will be fine.
Also, do not power feed. This generally will require a water change just before you go, and Murphy's Law will arise and have something go wrong while you are away.
I routinely leave for 2-3 weeks at a time. I do a water change the week before, make sure the filter is clean, and feed the fish every other day. (About half the time as normal).
After many years, I have I have uet to a fish using this method. Not even my large cichlasomines (8"+) in my 240.
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Been there done that, and luckily it was only for 5 days. The tank was so polluted with uneaten food that I almost lost everything.