Honestly, IMO, its a cross fingers and pray situation. A lot of good advice here (dont change anything right before you go, clear the overflow floss) but apart from having a controller on wifi with camera there is no way to know exactly what is going on from a 1000 miles away. The camera is a nice visual check that can provide some information to you remotely however even with that information...can you act on it? not unless you can call someone with reef knowledge to help trouble shoot. Many have advice to have a friend check in periodically but realistically they wont know whats wrong if things are dying without some information previously provided. It then becomes a facetime situation where youre asking a ton of the person who prolly just wanted to look at the tank for 2 mins. Having 5 gallons of freshly made water is handy if you needed to have your friend help out or upon arrival home needed to do WC.
My biggest piece of advice if you travel and have a tank...get an Apex or some controller that you can monitor the heartbeat of your aquarium remotely. Its expensive but the peace of mind is worth it. Id never have a tank with any amount of investment that I didnt have a wifi controller installed. At some point, murphy's law pops up and your tank is toast. (If Im being blunt) Murphy is like cancer...if you can catch it early you should be ok.
Ive vacationed many times in the past year and already twice the Apex saved my system from a stuck float and an overflowing skimmer. I was able to call my family to come and fix the situation until I returned.
