I got the call from home on Fiday that you sometimes dread, my son had been 'helping out ' with my fishtank!!! By the time I got home it had been a good 6 hours since the crimes were committed
Crime 1 - freshly made saltwater on the floor, but only 2 or 3 gallons. Well I've seen much worse so.., mop it up and say hooray that most of it has soaked into a rug. But make sure you clean out properly as I had a nice mix of salt and fishfood down betwen the floorboards, so I needed to get that out with a thin file.
Crime 2 - probably a whole pot of flake is now in the tank rotting away. Now everything looked alive, but pretty soon there's going to be one hell of an ammonia spike......so ....
Step 1 - do not panic at all - nothing dead yet.
Step 2 - start using some buckets to start making 10 gallons of freshwater
Step 3 - Gravel syphon out 2 1/2 gallons water, get out lots of gak. We are in a real hurry here so replace over 10 minutes with freshwater. This sounds crazy , but it isn't. As I have about 55 + gallons of water in there it barely drops my SG. I could easily have done more. Sure, my SG would then have been down 1 or so point in quite quick order, but lots of gak needs to come out fast.
Step 4 - clean skimmer get it going. Do not panic nothing coming out, skimmers often stop when food introduced to tank, however when the stuff starts rotting I need to be ready to go.
Step 5 - Replace carbon, and get a good load in.
Now for water changes. I have made 10 gallons and decide to do this every 4 hours. Normally I do not like to use freshly made water, and prefer to let it stand 24 hours for pH to settle, but I reckon after 4 hours it will be good enough.
I did 2 changes that day, and one the day after. I used tap water as this is an emergency, and I'm going to get an algale bloom anyway. I am more scared of ammonia spikes!
And that was that - I'm getting a bit of a diatom bloom, but everything is alive. If you have a good system to start with, and keep a clear head your fish are tough enough to survive some disasters.
Crime 1 - freshly made saltwater on the floor, but only 2 or 3 gallons. Well I've seen much worse so.., mop it up and say hooray that most of it has soaked into a rug. But make sure you clean out properly as I had a nice mix of salt and fishfood down betwen the floorboards, so I needed to get that out with a thin file.
Crime 2 - probably a whole pot of flake is now in the tank rotting away. Now everything looked alive, but pretty soon there's going to be one hell of an ammonia spike......so ....
Step 1 - do not panic at all - nothing dead yet.
Step 2 - start using some buckets to start making 10 gallons of freshwater
Step 3 - Gravel syphon out 2 1/2 gallons water, get out lots of gak. We are in a real hurry here so replace over 10 minutes with freshwater. This sounds crazy , but it isn't. As I have about 55 + gallons of water in there it barely drops my SG. I could easily have done more. Sure, my SG would then have been down 1 or so point in quite quick order, but lots of gak needs to come out fast.
Step 4 - clean skimmer get it going. Do not panic nothing coming out, skimmers often stop when food introduced to tank, however when the stuff starts rotting I need to be ready to go.
Step 5 - Replace carbon, and get a good load in.
Now for water changes. I have made 10 gallons and decide to do this every 4 hours. Normally I do not like to use freshly made water, and prefer to let it stand 24 hours for pH to settle, but I reckon after 4 hours it will be good enough.
I did 2 changes that day, and one the day after. I used tap water as this is an emergency, and I'm going to get an algale bloom anyway. I am more scared of ammonia spikes!
And that was that - I'm getting a bit of a diatom bloom, but everything is alive. If you have a good system to start with, and keep a clear head your fish are tough enough to survive some disasters.
Glad disaster has been averted thus far, not panicking and doing something stupid was probably a key factor.