Write the handover file for a successor who knows nothing about this tank, and cover seven parts: who lives in the tank, what each fish eats and how much and when, the water routine in plain steps, the equipment and its ages, the supplies and where they are kept, the care calendar, and the contacts to call for help. The know-nothing test governs every line: if a sentence only makes sense to someone who has already run this tank, it fails, and it gets rewritten until a willing stranger could follow it alone on a quiet weekend. Classroom and office tanks change hands through job moves, holidays and staff turnover, often quickly, and the fish cannot explain the routine the file forgot.
Start With Who Lives in the Tank
Open with the inhabitants: each species, how many, and the behaviour the new caretaker should expect as normal. Say who hides during the day and comes out at feeding, who claims which corner, and which fish eats slowly and needs food delivered near it. Normal behaviour written down stops a beginner mistaking a shy fish for a sick one, or a sick fish's stillness for shyness. Add any quirk with practical weight: a jumper that needs the lid closed straight after feeding, a bottom dweller that must be seen to eat, a pair that squabbles at one end and should be fed at both. Include any health history worth knowing in the same plain style, dated and brief, so past trouble is neither hidden nor exaggerated.
Feeding and Water Routines in Plain Steps
Write the feeding part as exact instructions: what each fish eats, how much in measures a stranger can copy, and when, including which days a food is given and which days nothing extra is offered. Then write the water routine as numbered steps a beginner can follow in order: how much water comes out, where it goes, how the replacement water is prepared, how much goes back in, and what temperature it should feel matched to before it is poured. Give the tank's normal temperature and its usual test readings as numbers to compare against, and say what a reading far from those numbers should trigger: a phone call, not an experiment. Define every tank word the first time it appears, from water conditioner to siphon, in a single short line.
Equipment, Ages, Supplies and the Calendar
List the equipment with its ages: the filter, heater and light, how old each one is, and the sign that each is working — a hum, a glow, a flow — so a silent failure is spotted as a change. Label the plugs and switches at the socket with the same names the file uses, and the file reads like a map of the real tank. Name the supplies and where they are kept with locations — the test kit in the labelled box on the shelf beside the tank, food in the cupboard below, spare media in the drawer — never 'in the usual place'. Set out the care calendar beside the routines: the daily jobs, the weekly jobs and the monthly jobs, each with its day, so the caretaker can see the rhythm on one page.
Contacts and the First Fortnight
Close with the contacts to call for help: your own number, a second person who knows the tank, and the building or school contact who can grant access out of hours, each labelled with what they can help with. Say plainly which problems justify a call at any hour — water on the floor, a silent filter, a cracked pane — and which can wait for the next working day. Offer to answer questions through the first fortnight and mean it, and walk the file through with the successor once beside the tank if timing allows, correcting anything they read differently from how you meant it. Kept together, those seven parts form a handover that KinsLe stores in a Pet Passport, ready to pass intact to whoever takes the tank on next.