Leaving the country

[laserbrn]

I have to leave the country for about 10 days. I have two people available to care for my 28G Nano Cube. They can at least feed the tank and top it off, but I wouldn't leave them to do a water change. I haven't changed the water in about 10 days and I'd like to do it now, but should I wait longer since I leave on Friday?

 

I guess the question is should I do two 5 gallon water changes, one today and one on Friday morning right before I leave? Is it possibly too much water change in too short of a time? I wouldn't want to start a little cycle.

[Hexadron]

As long as the parameters you are changing the water with are similar (alk, mg, cal, pH) than a larger one should be fine. It's when there is a big swing in params that there would be a shock to the system.

 

I would think the two 5g is a good idea

[laserbrn]

I have my parameters pretty locked down for now. If anything the nitrates will fall a bit, but everything else I'll put right back on the mark.

 

I figured it was a good idea, but I don't want to be the one that does something incredibly stupid before my trip.

[laserbrn]

Well, I'm not sure I succeeded in not being the incredibly stupid one. I decided to pull out the stock media basket that comes on the nano cube to take a look at it after my water change. Well, I picked it up and set it right back down and it just unholy contaminated my tank. I pulled out the sponge and rinsed it in my sink for a good 5 minutes and put it back in and turned the pumps back on. Hopefully it'll gather most of this crud back up again.

 

Everything has now closed up and my cleaner shrimp and wrasse are both hiding. It must be pretty funky in there. I'm going to check the parameters in about 30 minutes and balance everything back out. Hopefully the filter will pick it back up.

[laserbrn]

I think I'm going to eventually just take the stuff out of this media basket (after it sucks all this crap back up again) and avoid this disaster in the future. Now I see why people say not to keep the crap in there. It's hard when there's information from the LFS and the forum and so many places and it's hard to tell what's the right thing to do. LFS said run it like it comes, but I know everyone on here says take it out. I Should've taken it out and I definitely should've taken it out during the initial cycle.

[Hexadron]

What did you have in there?

[laserbrn]

a black sponge, some white cylinders and some tea bag looking things.

 

So Sponge...Ceramic Rings...Carbon.

 

I'm definitely going to look into replacing all of this soon. I was reading about it previously and everyone has seemed disenchanted with this setup, but I checked out the LFS's setup and sure enough it had the stock stuff so I ran with it.

[Hexadron]

Ya I definitely recommend checking your media every water change, and changing carbon is a must, otherwise don't bother running it. Sponges should be rinsed every week or so and same goes for floss. I wouldn't tinker too much with your media though until you get back. Removing something now may have negative effects..

 

If anything, rinse the sponge thoroughly in salt water or RO/DI and same goes for the rings. I would say you could take out the 'tea bag' without issues though

[laserbrn]

I just ordered Purigen, ChemiPure, and some filter floss via Amazon Prime. I agree with needing to leave I don't think I want to do too much, but at least I have the stuff. I rinsed out the sponge and ceramic rings and that was a start. When I get back I'll replace one of them at a time.