Vacation food tablets in a planted tank

[fishysmell]

I'm leaving for vacation on sat. and my plan has been to use those dissolving vacation food tablets in my tanks but then I heard something about how they can be negative to plants and since my tanks are heavily planted I am a little concerned. Will they screw up my plants or will they be fine? If anyone has used them before in their planted tanks I would like to know if everything came out alright. Thanks for the help.

 

[tetra girl]

They can be bad as they realease a lot of phosphate in to the tank which is an open invitation for algae. Hoe long are you going away for? If its only for 1 or 2 days you wont need to feed them while you are away but any longer you will need something. Personally i would go for an automatic feeder that you can purchase from you LFS. Not sure on the price but worth it if your worried about the well being of your plants

 

[zimmerlyct]

I would say that if you are going away for up to a week, just don't feed them. Feed them really good for a couple of days before you leave and don't worry about it. I am a strict believer in underfeed anyway, so you can listen or not. I'm telling you though, they will be fine...

 

[fishysmell]

Hey thanks for the answers. I'm going to be gone a week but I really could care less about algae since I have a top notch algae devistation unit =) that can knock off anything. I was just under the impression that the tablets could harm plants. Unless I hear otherwise I'll be going with zimmer's idea since I have been really beefing my fish up the last few days anyway. Thanks again for the responses, I really appreciate it.

 

[crook]

you can buy an automatic feeder for like $10 at walmart