The Nose Is the Report Card
A rummy-nose tetra announces its water quality in colour, so brief your sitter to read faces before anything else. In a settled tank the whole school carries blazing red heads, crisp black-and-white striped tails, and a tight, polished formation that turns as one fish. Show your sitter that picture under your normal lighting, then describe its failure honestly: reds fading to a dull pink wash across most of the school means the water has shifted — a filter slowing, waste building, a temperature drift — even when every fish is still swimming. One pale newcomer can be settling in; a school losing its colour together is a report to you that day, with a photo taken under the same lights for a fair comparison.
No Big Water Changes Without Your Word
A rummy-nose tetra is more sensitive to sudden change than the hardier tetras it is often sold beside, and that fact must be explicit in a sitter briefing. Well-meaning helpers who see faded fish reach for a bucket, and a large change with water of a different temperature or character can deepen the very stress that paled the school. Your written rule is that the sitter performs only the small, conditioned top-up you have demonstrated, if anything, and otherwise leaves the water alone until you have seen the photo and replied. What they do check is mechanical: filter running, flow steady, thermometer where it belongs, lid seated. Those four facts plus the picture give you everything needed to direct the next step from wherever you are.
School Behaviour the Sitter Should Report
A rummy-nose school that fragments is speaking, so teach your sitter the difference between a relaxed spread at feeding time and a group that cannot reform. Fish hanging alone at the surface, flicking or rubbing against leaves and wood, breathing visibly fast, or losing the tail stripes' contrast all belong in a same-day message. They should not net, isolate, or treat any fish on their own initiative; a chased tetra in a planted tank injures itself and exhausts the school around it.
Feeding a Mid-Water School Lightly
Portion the rummy-nose school's food in advance and explain how this fish eats: rising together into the middle water, taking small food quickly, and leaving almost nothing to fall. A sitter who scatters a second helping for luck is loading a tank whose fish have just demonstrated, with their colour, how closely they track their water. If the school ignores a feed it normally takes, the instruction is to stop, not to try a different food from the cupboard, and to report the refusal alongside the nose colour.
Deaths, Flicking, and the Backup Contact
Tell your sitter what to do if a rummy-nose dies, because guessing in that moment is how small events become lost information. The fish is removed with a soft net, the time is noted, a photo of the rest of the school is taken, and you are called before anything else happens — no water change, no treatment, no replacement fish from a shop, ever. Repeated flicking across several fish, spots appearing on bodies, or a second death are escalation signs for your backup plan: your aquatic shop or vet contact, used only if you cannot be reached and the school is visibly deteriorating.
Anchor the Briefing to the Colour Check
Keeping the school size, the good-day photo description, and the no-large-change rule in KinsLe as a Care Pass lets your sitter re-check the standard at the glass each visit, so a rummy-nose losing its red gets reported while it is still just a colour, not yet a crisis.