well if your mom will be there to turn the lights on and off, why not just have your mom feed them? a week is a long time to make them go without food..
What should I do when leaving my bettas home for a week
I'm flying to see my best friend who lives in Georgia and I'm leaving my two bettas at home. I was thinking about having them not eat till I come back and just have my mom turn the tank lights on in the morgning and off at night because I don't want the live plants to die. Would that be ok or should I do something else?
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Betta fish can go several weeks to a month or more without food. I don't see though why your mom can't feed the fish while you are gone, unless they live in small tanks and you are worried about the food and waste dirtying up their water.
That and over feeding them is why I'm thinking about having them not eat till I get back. I just don't want the live plants to die that are in he tank.
My bettas are fat anyway.
They'll be perfectly fine not eating.
They'll be fine without food. I was gone for about a week once and had my brother feed my fish. When I got home, there was a mass of pellets floating at the surface, and my betta had stuffed himself to the point that he had SBD. The water was also filthy. He neverfully recovered from that and he died a few months later.
That is what I'm worried about happening.
Yea then I would just not feed them.
Agreed, just have her turn the light on and be very, very specific about NOT feeding them. If she is anything like my mom, she will try to feed them anyway. When I was gone, I had my mom feed my fish and was very specific about 3 pellets in the morning, and 3 at night. She did it, but insisted it wasn't enough to feed them. Had I not told her how much and how often feed them, she would have fed them much, much more than that.
I think I'll hide the food.
I know what you mean about not trusting other people to feed correctly. I have orchids and people don't understand that you don't have to water them every day. I specifically instructed the people checking on my cats to just ignore the plants, that I had watered correctly before I left and the #1 way to kill an orchid is to over water.
Anyway,
I too wish to know what to do with my fish when I have to be gone for a week. I REALLY don't want to starve him and I bought one if those feeder things, but I don't know how reliable it is and he has a lid on his tank that I'll have to mess with so the tank can still be covered but the feeder can attach. IF I decide to keep the feeder.
I read somewhere that you can put the designated amount of food in one of those pill boxes that has separate sections for each day of the week.
Hide the rest of the food and hope the person only gives one day's worth of food. If your fish are fat like you say, do a couple of pellets less a day for vacation (and maybe in general? Lol)
Anyway,
I too wish to know what to do with my fish when I have to be gone for a week. I REALLY don't want to starve him and I bought one if those feeder things, but I don't know how reliable it is and he has a lid on his tank that I'll have to mess with so the tank can still be covered but the feeder can attach. IF I decide to keep the feeder.
I read somewhere that you can put the designated amount of food in one of those pill boxes that has separate sections for each day of the week.
Hide the rest of the food and hope the person only gives one day's worth of food. If your fish are fat like you say, do a couple of pellets less a day for vacation (and maybe in general? Lol)
i understand, when i had my first betta i went on vacation for a week and my only choice was to leave my betta with the only family member that didn't go, my elderly grandma who is a chronic over feeder. at this point my betta was already severely over fed but i had weaned her down to the correct amount of food but she was still obese. i left my grandma with explicit instructions but was half expecting to come home to a dead fish, because her vision is really really bad and she has pretty bad arthritis in her fingers so i was afraid she would have trouble getting the lid off of the critter carrier and leave it off or leave it off too long and the fish would jump out or that she literally wouldn't be able to see how much she was feeding her or feel how much food is in her hand and end up way over feeding. but when i got back she said she fed the correct amount and the water was as it should have been and my fish was fine.
Yeah my bettas are already on a diet. I'm not going to feed them this weekend.
I got carried away when I was teaching hem tricks. Opps
If you are fasting, don't worry about feeding. If you worry about overfeeding, just get one of those 7 day pill things, put the food your fish needs each day in each of the day sections, and take the rest of the food with you. 
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