The sitter-proof version of fish feeding instructions removes judgment entirely. Words like "a pinch" or "a little" fail because your pinch and your neighbor's pinch are different sizes, and fish pay for the difference in fouled water. The fix is to do the measuring yourself before you leave and reduce the sitter's job to one action per tank per day: empty this container, at this time, nothing else.
Portion everything before you go
Count out one small lidded pot per tank per day and put exactly one meal in each — the flake, pellets, or frozen cube ration you would normally feed, no more. Label each pot with the tank name and the day, and line them up in order. If a tank gets two feeds a day, make two rows and label them morning and evening. This takes ten minutes and it eliminates the single biggest sitter error, which is the generous extra shake of the flake tub "because they looked hungry." Fish almost always look hungry; that is not information.
Write times against the light, not the clock alone
Give each feed a time that matches your lighting timer, because fish wake, rise, and feed when the tank lights come on. "Tip pot three in when the living-room tank lights switch on, around breakfast" is harder to misread than a bare time, and it keeps the routine your fish already know. Add where the food goes: scattered across the surface for top feeders, dropped near the filter outflow for mid-water fish, or placed on the open sand for bottom dwellers — the sitter should not have to guess whether food is meant to sink.
Include the rules that prevent the classic mistakes
Write three short rules on the same page. First: if a pot is missed, throw that day's portion away and use the next day's pot — never feed two pots at once, because a double feed rots faster than fish go hungry. Second: no treats, no extra food from the kitchen, no trying the other tubs, however friendly the fish act. Third: hands stay out of the tank and nothing gets unplugged; if something looks wrong, the instruction is to phone you, not to improvise. These lines feel obvious written down, which is exactly why they work.
Leave a picture of one correct portion
Take one photo of a single day's portion beside the container it belongs in and send it to the sitter before you leave. If doubt creeps in mid-week, the picture settles it without a debate about what "enough" looks like. Also leave a note of what normal looks like — fish gathering at the surface at feed time, leftovers gone within a couple of minutes — and what is not: food still sitting on the gravel an hour later means the next pot should be the standard one, not a bigger apology.
Make the instructions live where the sitter finds them
Keep the written sheet taped beside the tanks, the pots in front of it, and the same details somewhere the sitter can check from their phone when they are standing in your kitchen wondering which tank is which. Handing that routine over through KinsLe's Care Pass gives your sitter the portions, times, and warning rules as one clear set of instructions they can follow exactly, so the tank they return to you is the tank you left.