fishy-sitters?

[Koda]

So I'm heading out of state to go visit a friend and will be gone for a whole week. I've gone on vacation before and left my betta under the care of my parents, but it wasn't long enough to need any water changes so all they had to do was offer him some food. Now I have 3 betta instead of just 1 and they'll need about 2 water changes while I'm gone. I intend to teach my step mom how I change the water tomorrow, but I'm just worried she might forget a step or my boys will get all stressed about it :(
What makes my worries worse is that a while ago (before all my betta) I had a double white snow rose bonsai that I left in my parents' care. It was kept in our sun room (it needed high light), but that week we had a heat wave and the sun room was super hot. They didn't water it nearly enough to make up for the heat and when I got home all of it's leaves were completely dried up and had no flowers (this plant usually flowers year round). I tried to save the poor thing, but it just refused to perk back up.
Needless to say, I'm weary about letting them take care of anything other than the dogs/cat.

What do you all do when you have to leave your fishy friends in the care of others?

[DragonFish]

I don't think I've ever been gone for longer then a little over a week since I started fish keeping....but usually if I'm gone for more then a few days, I ask my dad to feed everyone for me. Luckily, my dad understands the basics of fish keeping and knows better then to over-feed and whatnot. I've never had him do a water change for me, but I think he could do it if I showed him how.

Last time I went away for a week however I decided to give my little brother a chance to take care of my Leo and feed my fish(hes been wanting a Leo for a while, so I thought I'd give him a chance to see what it takes to care for them). What I did was write out specific instructions on what he was supposed to do for both lizard and fish and measured out a weeks worth of food for each fish in little baggies so he didn't accidentally over-feed. I also made a big deal of saying that if he(or my parents who would be supervising of course)had any questions to call or text me rather then try and guess.

On top of showing your step mom what to do before you go, you can write out all the steps and leave it out for her(maybe print out multiples in case one gets wet or lost)so she has something to refer to. And you can tell her that if she thinks she forgot something, or something just doesn't seem quite right, to call you right away just in case.

I hope this helps.....best of luck! :)

[Koda]

I thought about making a care sheet for them to follow. Didn't think about having them call/text if they run into problems :0 I might even make them face-time me on water change days to show me that they haven't killed them. They're probably going to make fun of me for that haha XD

[DragonFish]

Lol, yup. Thats one of the big things I went a little overboard telling my family when I went away...."Call me, no matter how big or small, if you have a question....don't think you know and guess!!". Not that I don't trust my family, actually I'm quite lucky to have my dad who knows and understands a little more about it then most parents, but I'm kinda....over-protective of my little finned babies xD

Haha, yeah....I'd probably do the same if I could and had to xD They tease me anyway, so I've kinda stopped caring after all these years, lol.