Hopefully I avoided catastrophe

My hubby bought me a snowflake eel 2 weeks ago (it's tiny) and it's in the 10 gallon tank until the 125 we want is actually in my living room. Then for my birthday (Wednesday) he bought me a bubble coral which is also in the 10 gallon. I turned off the powerhead and filter to feed last night and got distracted by hubby and forgot to turn them back on. This morning, I realized that the tank had basically been sitting idle for 12 hours.

Small tank = small room for error!

First thing I did was turn everything back on, then I realized that a dwarf cerith had made its way into the mouth of the bubble coral...not good...It was trying to digest the snail's shell (the snail was dead) and having no luck but it wasn't trying to eat anything else either. I got the tweezers out and removed the snail very carefully so as not to tear the corals tissue and then tested my water. While I was running tests I was quickly removing any dwarf ceriths out of the tank.

Holy AMMONIA spike Batman!!! It was 1.5 at 8 AM, then 0.75 (YEAH, headed the right direction) at 3 PM and is somewhere in between 0.25 and 0.5 now. The nitrites have spiked as well and are on their way back down, I expect a nitrate spike in the morning.

The good news is that the eel and the coral are doing well. The eel was out snipping at pods (tons of them in this little tank) and hunting food this evening and the bubble coral was almost completely inflated again at lights out, it looked like death this morning.

I felt so bad, acclimating it so carefully yesterday morning only to try and kill it last night.

I also had no water mixed up, so no water change was going to save anything.

I'm not counting my chickens but it looks like the bacteria is doing its job and I'll run full params in the morning, hopefully the mini-cycle will be on its way out.

Gin

 

Fingers crossed everything will be fine!

Why do you turn your filters off during free time?

 

Glad to hear everything is OK. You avoided disaster. Does show you how resilient these lifeforms can be.

 

Situations like this are why I ALWAYS have a bottle of Prime lieing around. I use RO/DI water so I don't need it for detoxifying tapwater.....I keep it just for emergencies. I also use these.

Hopefully everything works out for you.

 

Glad to hear nothing was lost, only a few hairs off your head. lol Keep us posted. Luna

 

Hope everything is well this morning. As I have gotten older, I've become forgetful about things like that, so now I put my kitchen on so I remember to turn things off or on.

 

Today, everything is GREAT!!! I keep bacterboost in the fridge at all times!!! The bubble does have a small tear in the mouth where the snail was lodged but it's eating and still inflating so I'm going to do some iodine dips to prevent infections. Any other suggestions?

 

Just keep that eye steady and hopefully all has been avoided!! Goodluck Gin. Keep us posted !

 

Happy to hear all is well!

 

Good, I was thinking of ya today. Glad all is well.