I buried my flamehawk alive!

wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
I don't believe we did this. We added 50 lbs of southdown to my 20 gal tank. I bagged everything and floated it over to the side while hubby poured in the sand. Somehow the flamehawk got out and now he's buried in there somewhere. I was hoping he was just out in the milk vat, but now it's cleared up after 3 days and he's nowhere in sight. This is awful, what happens if I can't find him? There is over 4 inches of sand in there. I just can't believe I was this stupid!:( :(
 
slothy

slothy

Active Member
i feel for ya.... i did the same to my old arrow crab... thought he was fast enough.. added all the sand, put all the live rock back in... and took a hour to relized that i was missing something... :(
 
wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
We even used pvc pipe to direct the sand flow and when we go digging for him we are just going to stir it all up again. I hope we can even find him.
 
broomer5

broomer5

Active Member
Wrassecal
What a bummer - sorry to hear about this.
Here's a long shot - might not even be worth mentioning, but what the heck - can't hurt.
I'm wondering if the fish is dead - if - and is buried in the sandbed - do you suppose as it begins to decompose it would start leaching out ammonia near the spot it's buried ?
If so - would the other fish and roaming inverts tend to "avoid" this area ? I don't know.
If so - and here's the long shot part - if you notice a part of the tank's substrate that no fish or inverts are near - maybe dig around that place ?
Told you it was a long shot. I hope things work out for you - and maybe it's still alive - maybe :(
 
j21kickster

j21kickster

Active Member
or mabye the opposite- i see live fish picking at dead fish all the time- mabye your crabs will dig it out for you(if you have any)
 
wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
Thanks for the advise. I only have one baby false perc, one crab, one snail, 15lbs of lr and a bunch of caulerpa in there. I'm about to try to go digging .Maybe there will be a miracle....
 
wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
Well, that did absolutely no good. The tank immediately clouded right back up, as I figured it would, so I just went ahead and stirred it up as much as possible in case the fish was just stuck and not dead. Now on top of losing my fish to my stupidity, I'm worried about the ammonia spike in only a 20 gal. and I'm probably looking at a couple more days of milk vat visibility. Anyone got any ideas if I get a huge ammonia spike, just water changes or what? Hey if I work this right I'm probably looking at a cloudy tank with water quality problems for the next couple weeks, what fun:(
 
gregzbobo

gregzbobo

Member
That definitely sucks Wrassecal. :( Hope he makes it. Umm, on another note, where did you get southdown from? I've been to a few Home Depots, A lowes, and 2 Ace Hardware stores and did not find it. Did you buy it locally, or order it online? I'm looking to buy a couple bags for my tank. And a big water change should not hurt should it? Might even clear out some of the milkiness.
 
wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
I had the Norman Home Depot get the southdown shipped from a store on the east coast last spring. I used most of it in my main display tank. It really wasn't worth the trouble moneywise and I had to pay their shipping costs. It's great sand though. Hopefully, I won't have to do a water change until some of this southdown is bonded to the bacteria and settled down a little bit. I have to say I'm having a manic weekend swinging between euphoria over the OU win over Texas and nightmares over the fish being buried alive!:eek:
 
gregzbobo

gregzbobo

Member
Ah ok, I looked into getting some ordered myself and the home depot I tried that at said I would likely have to order a whole pallet of the stuff, which I would assume is MANY bags. Definitely not worth it, I only need about 75-90 pounds of the stuff. Plan to use quality live sand to do the rest till I have maybe 120 pounds sand total in the tank, give or take. Thanks for replying though, I appreciate it.
 
wrassecal

wrassecal

Active Member
Well this story is over. My husband just started digging around in the sand with his hand and found the dead flamehawk......guess I should start a "stupidist thing I ever did in this hobby" thread:(
 
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