Write for a tired stranger, not for yourself
Your reader is a kind neighbour standing in your kitchen after work, possibly in the rain, holding your key. Instructions written for that person look different from the notes you would write for yourself: one job per line, each line short enough to act on without re-reading, ordered exactly as the visit happens, walking in, glance, feed, check, leave. Cut every explanation that does not change what the reader does. The history of your algae battle and the name of the plant in the corner may be fascinating, but on the page they bury the two lines that keep fish alive, and buried lines get missed.
Feeding instructions that cannot be misjudged
Never describe an amount in words a stranger must interpret; a pinch, a sprinkle and a small handful are three different meals in three different hands. Measure every holiday feed yourself into labelled pots, one per feeding day, and let the page say only: empty one pot, watch the fish eat for a moment, done. State the feeding days as weekdays, not intervals, because 'every other day' dissolves by the second week of a trip. Then add the sentence that saves more holiday tanks than any other: if a feed is missed, skip it, and never feed double to catch up.
The daily glance and the never list
After feeding comes the thirty-second check, written as comparisons against normal rather than technical targets: the filter's outflow rippling as usual, the thermometer inside the green zone you have marked on it, every fish out or accounted for, the water level near the tape mark on the glass. Follow it with the never list, equally short: never a second feed however hungry the fish act, never a water change or a filter clean, never hands, sprays, candles or furniture polish near the water, never any product from the cupboard added to the tank. A helper told clearly what not to do is protected from the improvisation that causes most holiday losses.
Alarms and the order of phone calls
End the page with thresholds and names. Write the two or three sights that mean act today, a silent filter, cloudy water, a fish dead or gasping at the surface, and beside each, the action: unplug nothing, take a photo, phone the first number. Give three numbers in call order: yours, a local person who also holds a key and knows the tank, and your aquatics shop, which can talk a helper through an equipment failure better than you can from a beach. Agree with your helper that reporting a problem earns thanks, so bad news travels fast instead of being hidden in hope.
From fridge door to the tank's own profile
The page on the fridge fades, gets covered by a takeaway menu, or stays behind when the plan changes hands mid-trip. Keeping the same instructions as a KinsLe Care Pass fixes them to the aquarium's own profile, where the feeding days, the glance-check, the never list and the call order sit with the tank's details, ready for the one helper or the substitute you had to recruit from the airport, and updatable by you from wherever the holiday took you.