How to Feed Your Fish When You're Going on Holiday

Avoid feeding blocks or other holiday feeder blocks that claim to slowly release food into the water. These blocks often foul water more than they feed your fish, and this can lead to dangerous water quality issues. Fish also prefer a feeding schedule and are unlikely to adapt suddenly to a change in food type and location. These blocks also don’t cater for different types of feeders, such as top feeders or middle feeders, and they often don’t provide adequate nutrition either.

The best way to feed your fish is an automatic feeder. Automatic feeders usually run on battery power, and release a set amount of food on schedule. These feeders can usually be programmed to feed varying amounts of food at varying times. The main issues with automatic feeders is that mechanical or battery failure is still possible, and they will have a limited amount of food that they can store.

To reduce the risk of the automatic feeder failing or running out, start using it for at least a week before you go away so you can troubleshoot any potential issues.

It is still best to have someone pop in every few days or so to check that everything is looking okay and make sure that all your equipment looks like it's all running normally.