Pets and Vacations

We are planning on going on Vacation and the problem arises.....How to care for your pets when your not there.

Dogs and Cats have a very simple solution though kind of expensive. There are kennels and "pet motels" everywhere you go. You simple have to find one you think will care for your pet they way you want them cared for. I am choosing to go with the kennel at my vets. Simply because I have an extremely elderly cat and a dog with a gimpy hip. I know they will get the best care there. But what about the fish, frog, tadpole and turtle?

Fish aren't a big problem either. We have timers from past trips we can place on the lights and picked up some vacation fish food from Petco. It is pyramid shaped and will dissolve over the time we are gone to release food for the fish. If you want to go a little more high tech you can get a battery powered feeder that will drop food in every day.

The real problem is the exotic pets in my case the turtle, tadpole and frog. My solution was to talk to some of the experts and here are the solutions I've decided on. For Rex the Turtle we will be adding some live plants and some feeder fish to his tank since we have a canister filter we shouldn't have to worry about cleaning his tank. We will probably put in some of the small snails to give him something to dig around for too.

We took Kermit the Frog out and put him in his new habitat it's not as finished as I would have liked. I wanted to get some moss growing in there but haven't been successful yet so we added some "Frog Moss" I purchased at Petco to put on the land side until I get the moss to grow. There is enough room that I will be able to add several crickets for him and he will eat some of the fish food that will be released from the vacation food.

As for the Rocso the tad pole he will be a little tricky. You see his little tank wont support a battery operated vacation feeder and though he would eat the food in a vacation pyramid the water would quickly become filthy and he would suffocate. We have added some plants to his habitat. We have chosen Anicharis, which is a long plant that can be placed in the rocks to grow roots or left to float (which is important since the tadpole habitat has no rocks) and some duck weed which is also a floating plant. These will feed the tadpole and help keep the water a little cleaner.