[DonaldmBoyer]

This is hard AME because you want something that looks great, but requires little maintenance with your travel schedule. That is difficult to do.

They do sell automatic dosers, and you can hook up your CO2's solenoid to a timer. Those are pluses for you.

However, what if you aren't around and a problem happens? You could potentially destroy your tank in a matter of a day or two because your CO2 was stuck "On," or your automatic doser didn't dose properly. It is unlikely that these things would happen, but they COULD happen. Then you wasted all of that money, get frustrated, and give up on the hobby.

I suggest doing something a little more "user-friendly"; something that doesn't require a lot of maintenance or know-how so you can have success and fun while learning from it. As your schedule allows in the future, you will have the knowledge base and wisedom needed to set something a little more advanced down the road. It would be difficult for any members here to have a difficult setup immediately, leave town for days or a week at a time, and return expecting that our advanced planted tank would still look fantastic.

I'm sure that you could do something very nice looking that won't have high demands. Why don't you buy a bunch or two of HC, place it in your tank for a week or two with your current conditions and work schedule, and make a mental note of how it looks at the end of two weeks. That way, you would be able to judge for yourself whether or not this would be a plant that you could handle with your time schedule and tank conditions.

It is simply one idea.......keep us posted, and we'll help you as much as possible. But I agree with Steven that you must provide us with more details. How much lighting do you have? What type of substrate? What type of fertilizer? What other types of plants? How much CO2 do you have running in bubbles/second?