Kessil

Leads on short term tank caretakers near Redwood City

R

richiev

Supporting Member
BARcard
Due to some issues I had to quickly travel out of the area. Currently my tanks are being taken care of by my wife, but she may need to come out as well.

I'm looking for any leads on people who might be able to do some tank maintenance, near Redwood City. There's a recent thread, so I'll cc folks mentioned there, but reaching out again here just in case.

I'll try and get a neighbor to feed the tanks, and I might be able to talk then through topping off ATO and stuff, but I'm hoping to find a backup in case we're out of town awhile.

Feel free to pm or respond here. Apologies I don't have a firm expectation on how many days or which days yet.

It'd be a Reefer 170 that's going through a dino outbreak (verify ATO, probably adjust 2 part dosing once), and a small frag tank with similar needs. I already have lots of water (salt and RODI) made.
 
richiev said:
verify ATO, probably adjust 2 part dosing once), and a small frag tank with similar needs. I already have lots of water (salt and RODI) made.
Click to expand...
Backup plan, huge brute with rodi, and set your dosing to what you think minus 5% and let it run. Or get a trident. It is a bit of a drive for me, but I could make it if you needed something.
 
I’m sure I could swing by once or twice if needed. I think you’d get a variety of estimates on prices depending on what you really needed done and how long it takes.
I think current market rates are like $80-200 per hour depending on who you get.
If you need simple things like top off I bet you could get a member that lives near you to help.
 
Thanks folks. That's helpful. The main thing with the Reefer is I just literally finished switching off AFR to 2part this week, and I'd initially set it to 1ml of each 2 part twice a day, so I could see the drift after the AFR got fully metabolized. I'm 90% sure I forgot to bump it before hopping on a plane, so I have no idea what it needs to be set to.

I also dumped a bunch of AFR into my big ass frag tank RODI thinking "meh, it'll probably work".

I love the idea of just setting up a Trident, that's almost certainly what I'm going to do when I get back to avoid this in the future. I might just talk my wife through a Hanna Alk test over video. Luckily those are super easy.

@Coral reefer am I right to assume the hourly rate would normally include being paid for travel time?
 
I think different service people are going to charge you different amounts with the travel. Not sure how others do it really. If you wanna talk send me a message for sure.
 
i can come by in the morning and get your tanks into a safe mode and I can come by next week to check on it or update something. can’t come by this weekend though. can also put on an auto feeder. How long can the tank go without maintenance/dosing? You can drop your light levels and shut off dosing. Corals think it’s a storm and all slow down. Used that trick before.
 
Thanks for the contacts folks, very helpful and appreciated! I'll be coming back Sunday and walked my wife through some maintenance over video so for now I'm ok. I might take folks up on some offers in the coming weeks though.

Following Murphy's law, this morning my wife found the frag tank doing weird stuff, and the RODI container empty. I had her do a salinity test (yay for video chat) and my frag tank with all my frags that have been growing great had a salinity of 22ppt.

Somehow a drain got plugged up and led to the ATO flooding the tank. Wah wah wah. That's what I get for not installing a redundant float into the higher tank like I'd planned to.

I have no idea how long it was like that, but over probably a couple hours of water changes got the water up to 32ppt and had her refill the RODI with diluted saltwater to let it slowly get back to 35ppt without her messing with buckets.

At least over video it looks mostly like the coral and fish survived, so that's promising. I'm sure when I get there the sps will be nuked, but it is what it is.

Notes to self:
* Obviously redundant drains would've been good, but that tank it's not really doable. Still might reconsider trying to drill one one more time
* I should've installed a water alarm
* I need to get the reef pi accessible remotely. I could've messed with some things to help
* I need to get an alert set for the ATO running too long, and auto disable it. The ATO was doing what it should've, but a max timer would've saved it.
* I should've installed the secondary float in case of a slow/plugged drain
 
I am also looking for a tank watcher in Redwood City! I am happy to offer my services, as I need to be looking to trade tank watching. I am going on a 2 week trip from June 28th-July 12th and am really just looking to have someone on call for catastrophic events, as I'll have 3 cameras, a trident, and two DOS pumps on the tank. If anyone in this thread is going to be around, I would love to meet up this week to talk tank, or trade tank watching duties!
 
jstiltne said:
I am also looking for a tank watcher in Redwood City! I am happy to offer my services, as I need to be looking to trade tank watching. I am going on a 2 week trip from June 28th-July 12th and am really just looking to have someone on call for catastrophic events, as I'll have 3 cameras, a trident, and two DOS pumps on the tank. If anyone in this thread is going to be around, I would love to meet up this week to talk tank, or trade tank watching duties!
Click to expand...
I'd take you up on that trade. Through another turn of events I'm not actually going to be heading back to the bay area as planned and my wife will be traveling out to where I am.

I have a neighbor who is going to do auto top off filling and aquarium feeding, but having a backup in case something goes crazy would be great.

I do expect you be back during the timeline you're mentioning, but I'm slightly unsure. I'll 100% cover any time I'm there though.

I'll pm you
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top