"mommy I Fed The Fishy"

[debbiedoc1]

I have a 46 gallon freshwater tank. It holds one gourami, one killifish, and one guppy. They survived the cycle fine, even the guppy. I had ammonia and nitrite readings of zero. My nitrates were 5. I was looking to add a pleco. I had just done a 10 percent water change and changed out the microfiltration pad and nitrozorb pad in my rena xp1 filter, when my almost 3 year old announced... "mommy I feed the fishy". He had dumped an entire jar of food into the tank. I immediately started vaccuuming. By that evening my ammonia level was 0.25 and the nitrites remained at 0. Post disaster day 1 my ammonia was 0.5 as were the nitrites. It is now day 2 and ammonia is 1.0 and the nitrites are 1.6. My plan is to do 10
% water changes daily as well as continued surface vaccuuming. Any other suggestions? Would it harm the bacterial load to do more aggressive gravel vacuuming?

 

[Tolak]

Most of your nitrifying bacteria reside in the filter media, so I would be more aggressive with the vac. Upping the water changes to 25% daily will help as well.

 

[drango91]

aww poor kid, hide your food nxt time but yeah do some decent water changes get some ammo-lock for them if the ammonium looks to be hurting them too much..

 

[MHunt]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I did that once to my brothers goldfish when i was three! Only with vitamin tablets! most died apart from one which grew to about three times it's size in a coupole of weeks!!!!!!!!

I would remove as much of the waste food as possible, then unfortunately you're going to have to wait for the tank to break down the ammonia and nitrite again!

 

[xostrawberryox]

Yikes! Poor you!! The good news is you have a large tank with few fish! Larger water changes would be your best bet and vacuum the gravel as thats probably where all your flake is hiding! What type of water are you using for your changes? Just tap water or something purer?

 

[debbiedoc1]

Update on the tank. My ammonia topped out at 1, but after aggressive vacuuming (thanks for the advice) and water changes, it has returned to zero. The nitrites are up to 5 and holding. Fish are doing ok at this point.

 

[Tolak]

Nitrites inhibit a fish's blood from carrying O2 efficiently. Increasing aeration by adding an airstone or dropping the water level a little if you have a hob filter will increase the O2 level in the water. There is a water treatment called Prime, it's usually used as a dechlorinator, but helps neuteralize ammonia & nitrites. You may want to give this a try, I use it to dechlor all my tanks.

Sounds as if you are working through this quite well.

 

[scubadoo]

You can get those nitrites down doing plenty of water changes.

After my bacteria suffered a bit of a die off I was doing about 30-40% water changes twice daily. A real pain with a 50 gallon tank, but it got my nitrites right down from off the chart to almost 0 in a couple of days.

 

[Ransom]

I have visions of my son doing this in a few years
he's just starting to crawl right now

hope your fish live through it

 

[debbiedoc1]

Final update on the tank. Ammonia and nitrite are back to zero as of yesterday. Unfortunately, Mr. Guppy did not make it. He died yesterday. I hope I can replace him before the 3 year old assassin notices.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[xostrawberryox]

Very well done Debbie! A guppy is a small price to pay considering where your water stats were! I wonder how to child-proof a fish tank!!