Decaying Food

adamc1303

adamc1303

Active Member
I asked someone to feed my fish because I went away for a few days. They overfed the fish and now I have silversides all over the sand bottom. I did a 30 % water change last night and tried to get as much food off the sand as I can. There is still food everywhere and my water is cloudy which is normal when you overfeed. However I have high nitrates and ammnia levels, is that due to the decayed food??? What canI do to adjust everything back to normal quickly??
 
bigarn

bigarn

Active Member
Do you have a clean up crew? Do a large water change and run carbon .... lots of carbon!
 
J

jdragunas

Guest
Yes, the decayed food will definately spike your ammonia, ites, and ates. Remove all of the food, or as much as you can (by hand if you have to), and like everyone else said, do a water change immediately to keep the nitrates in check.
Carbon is an excellent idea!!!
jenn
 
mikeyjer

mikeyjer

Active Member
Originally Posted by jdragunas
Yes, the decayed food will definately spike your ammonia, ites, and ates. Remove all of the food, or as much as you can (by hand if you have to), and like everyone else said, do a water change immediately to keep the nitrates in check.
Carbon is an excellent idea!!!
jenn

I would agree to all above postings!!!!!

But I would do a 25% water change and siphon substrate plus left over food. Use a net if the food partical is floating around, get as much out as possible. IMO I would smack the hell out of the person who overfed my tank.
I cut my little frozen cubes up and put them in separate little cubicals and that's what measures the feeding per day. I do that just in case I won't be around and it would be easy to feed by just empty one cubical. I always have it stocked up for up to 20 days or so. No one would ever over feed from just empty one cubical per day. So get something where you can separate and measure your food all in a little separate cubicals and when you leave next time, this won't happen again.
 
kdfrosty

kdfrosty

Active Member
If there are media trays like wet drys have you can run it there. Otherwise you can also get media bags, fill em with carbon, and put them in an area where the water flows from one compartment of the wet dry to another.
 
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