Build the plan in layers before you leave, because the failure you are planning for is silent: a filter can stop while the tank looks unchanged for a day or more, and corydoras, as bottom fish living where waste collects, suffer quickly in warm, still, fouling water. The plan below puts every item the sitter will use into their hands in advance, in the order they will need it, so a failure is handled the day it is noticed rather than discovered when you return.
Prepare the Backup Kit Before You Leave
Gather and position these items before your trip:
- A spare sponge filter, run in the tank alongside the main filter for some weeks before you leave so it carries working filter bacteria
- A spare air pump, or a battery-backed pump, connected or ready to connect to that sponge filter
- Photo instructions, printed or saved, showing exactly what the running filter looks and sounds like, and where switches and plugs are
- A labelled container of conditioned water, filled and dated, for an emergency partial change under your phone guidance
- Pre-portioned food for the days away, so the sitter cannot overfeed while you are gone
Run the sponge filter in the tank during your final weeks at home and leave it in place when you travel. It supports the main filter in normal times, and if the main filter fails it may already be doing much of the work, quietly, before anyone notices a problem.
Reduce the Load the Backup Must Carry
Do a partial water change and a gentle clean of the main filter shortly before you leave, so the tank starts the trip in good shape. Feed sparingly in the last days at home and leave measured portions for the trip, because uneaten food is the waste load that turns a stopped filter into foul water within days. A tank that begins clean, lightly fed and double-filtered gives every later layer of the plan more time to work.
Show the sitter the tank while everything is running. Let them hear the filter's usual sound, see the usual bubbles or flow, and read the thermometer with you, so their daily comparison is against a remembered normal and not just a written number.
The Daily Sitter Check
Ask for a check every day, at roughly the same time, of three things: bubbles or flow, showing whether water is moving; the temperature number; and the fish themselves — corydoras should be resting and rooting around the substrate in their usual groups, not gathered at the surface or gasping. The sitter records each check briefly, date, movement seen, temperature read and fish behaviour, so a gap in checking is visible too.
Make the instruction explicit: the sitter phones you on the day a check fails, not at the end of the trip and not after waiting a day to see whether the filter restarts itself. A stopped filter plus a warm room can change the water faster than a sitter expects, and an early call turns an emergency into instructions.
If the Check Fails
On your call, the sitter works in this order. First, confirm the pump for the sponge filter is plugged in, switched on and producing bubbles; if the mains pump has failed, connect the battery-backed pump so the sponge filter runs. Second, check the main filter's plug and switch, and restart it only if it starts cleanly and sounds normal. Third, stop feeding until you have spoken again. Fourth, if you judge a change is needed, the sitter uses the labelled conditioned water for a partial change under your guidance, matching how much to remove and replace to your spoken instructions.
Written this way and shared before departure, KinsLe allows your Care Pass to carry the kit list, the daily check and the failure order together, so your sitter acts from your plan rather than from panic beside a silent tank.