Well I made the mistake of the year

Stupid me, I got the idea that i was going to do some not really needed maintenance on the tank and forgot to put the lid on my pellet food which was sitting on the brink of the canopy. Yup, I knocked it in and released probably 200-300 pellets which promptly swept around the and got scattered around the bottom, settled under rocks and anywhere else they could possibly go to make it impossible to clean up. I'm an idiot for not leaving well enough alone. I don't have a gravel vaccum and my sand is very fine anyway so it would all get sucked through if I used one.

I probably just doomed my tank in my moment of stupidity to way over polluted water. I waited for my vaunted Nassarius team to come up and start cleaning with their vast numbers, but only saw about 5 pop up. It was then that I noticed all of the empty shells all over the place. My hermits have obviously been murdering them in record numbers. Sigh, I still have a few hundred nerites and ceriths which will hopefully aid when they wake up tonight but I can't help but wonder if I'm screwed.

I cant imagine how much ammonia and crap these are going to release when they rot.

 

Sorry to hear of your misfortune. You should prepare to do some big waterchanges and test parameters daily for the next few.

 

Yeah, I hope I can hold out with the half bag of salt I have now til payday on Friday. I'm depressed cause I was finally getting it to be the way I wanted. These fish are picking a hell of a time to not eat. They could but a decent dent in them if they tried but I think they are terrified from me yelling expletives and knocking stuff everywhere trying to catch the pellets as they cascaded down the water column.

 

Can you get in there with a plastic tube and syphon the sandbed? If you use a gravel-vac, the openings will be too small to pick up pellets anyway, so it doesn't matter that you don't have one. But if you just use a piece of flexible plastic tubing (like 1/2", for example, that you could buy from Home Depot for about $2), you can use it to syphon and vacuum up any crap on the sandbed. This could save your tank if you do a thorough job. Yes, you will end up picking up lots of sand with it, but who cares? Isn't it worth it to lose some sand to save the tank from crashing?

 

Yeah I'm gonna have to do that. In the mean time I hope my foxface doesnt kill himself by overeating. He came out of hiding and is having a grand old time plowing through all he can find.

 

can you scoop up pellets with a small brine shrimp net?

 

I tried using a net to get some but God it takes forever with how much sand I get in there and these are small pellets so I need to use the smaller net. Then I have to pick the 15 snails out of the sand in the net from that one little area :-/

 

I wouldn't do any massive water changes unless Ammonia test shows Ammonia. To help prevent a catastrophe, go get some Ammo-sorb or other Ammonia absorbing media and get it in there now. I would use 2 times what they recommend.

 

Where are you located....if you're close I can give you some salt if you need it to hold you over until you get paid!!!!

 

Georgia Thanks for the offer though I really appreciate it. This just had to happen when I had to pay for car repairs which made me broke: Much as it embarrasses me I may have to ask my mom for money to buy some media and salt for water changes. Sucks to ask you parents for money as an adult.