Start With the Feeding Moment, Not the Equipment
Your sitter's visit to the fish lasts a few minutes, and almost everything that can go wrong goes wrong in those minutes: too much food, a light left on all week, a filter switched off and forgotten. So build the page in the order the visit happens. The top of the page is what the sitter does first — feed. Underneath, in visit order, come the glance at the thermometer, the lights, the top-up if the waterline has dropped, and the one phone number that matters. Anything the sitter does not need this week — your fertiliser routine, your filter-media schedule, the history of the tank — stays off the page entirely. A short page that gets followed beats a complete one that gets skimmed.
What Goes on the Page, Tank by Tank
If you keep more than one tank, give each its own block with its own heading: the tank's location in the house and a plain description of who lives in it. 'Hallway tank: six guppies, two corydoras, snails' tells a sitter far more than a species list in Latin. Under each heading, write the food by what the tub looks like and where it stands — 'the small green tub on the shelf under the tank' — because a sitter does not know brand names and should never have to guess between containers. Add the days this tank is fed if they differ, the light times if the lights are not on a timer, and the temperature the thermometer should show, written as a single number to check rather than a range to interpret.
Make Amounts Impossible to Misread
'A pinch' is where sitter feeding goes wrong, because a sitter's pinch and your pinch are different sizes and an anxious sitter feeds generously to be kind. Remove the judgement call entirely. Before you go, portion each feed into small labelled pots — one per tank per day — so the sitter empties a pot instead of estimating. If pots are impractical, leave the exact spoon you use, marked with tape at the fill line, and a phone photo of one correct portion next to a coin for scale. Then write the rule that covers every accident: if a feed is missed, skip it; never double the next one. Fish that rush the glass are begging out of habit, not hunger, and the page should say so, because begging fish are the main reason sitters feed twice.
The Lines That Prevent a Midnight Panic
Three short lines near the bottom of the page handle most emergencies. First: what a running filter sounds like and where its hum comes from, so silence gets noticed. Second: if the thermometer shows well above or below the number on the page, the sitter calls you before adjusting anything — heater dials get misread, and a guessed turn can do more damage than the drift itself. Third: if the power goes off, lids stay closed, feeding stops, and the sitter calls you rather than opening the tank to look. Under those lines, your number, a backup person who has seen the tank before, and the shop you use, in that order.
Test the Page Before You Travel
A page you have only read yourself is untested. While you are still home, hand it to the sitter at an ordinary feeding time and stand back. Watch where they hesitate: the hesitation is a defect in the page, not in the sitter, so fix the wording on the spot rather than explaining it aloud — your voice will not be in the kitchen when it matters. Tape the final version beside the main tank or pin it inside the cupboard door where the food lives, at standing eye height, not folded in a drawer. When the page passes that test, KinsLe's Care Pass can carry the same routine to your sitter as a temporary, clear hand-over of your fish's care details, so the instructions they follow while you are away are the tested version — not a fading sticky note.