What an unsupervised 5 year old can do to a 30 gallon tank

Hey all, I need some good suggestions. My girlfriend's daughter decided to feed my fish last night a brand new entire bottle of fish food. As you can imagine, disaster. Lost everything. Now I need some suggestions on moving forward. I have a 30 gallon tank with about 25lb of LR and + or - 2" of live sand. Upon this disaster happening, I realized that I somehow got an infestation of bristle worms. There were literally a 100 of them all over the sand and rock. I occasionally would see one of these guys coming out of the LR, which caused my no concern. Is my sand and LR still salvageable, and if so, what can I do? Or should I just start over? What's done is done. It's been a long day, but any positive comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

When you say, "start over", what exactly do you mean?

 

Well he seems to be assuming his rock & sand are ruined now so he probably means to cycle the tank all over, as if a new tank?

 

If you left the LR in water then it is still salvageable as is the sand. I would say to just fill er back up with some good clean salt water and let the tank stabalize w/o anything in it for a few weeks. For future reference, don't put a tang in a 30gal tank. They get huge and need a lot of swimming room. As for the bristle worms, you could get an arrow crab and he'll make short work of them.

 

I'd say the bristle worms are not an infestation at all. Totally normal, you just don't normally see them out like that.

Also, the hippo tang had no business in that tank to begin with. Way too small.


I would totally start over. Fish food is so loaded with phosphates that I would think the sand and rock would soak it up and be leaching it out for a long time. Doesn't look like you're particularly long into the tank life...

Try nuking the rock, throw out the sand, start fresh. Keep tank size appropriate fish. Keep food out of reach of kids

Sucks man. Sorry to hear your loss. Don't let it get you too down though.

 

*jaw drops*

That is awful! Soooo sorry to see that!

 

Well it's a two year old tank, but I was thinking the same thing as far as the rock and sand pretty much being soaked with the food and it spiking the amonia and nitrates for a long time. What do you mean Nuke the LR? And yes, when I said start over, I mean to just get all new sand and LR and let it cycle a few months. Also, my tang was very young and I had a plan for him when he got too big for the tank. It really does suck, but I'm trying to just stay positive.

 

Maybe, I don't like assuming so I was inquiring as to what the person was thinking of doing exactly.

 

sorry for your troubles, my son once put his head in my tank to talk to the fish.

 

Probably easier to start over, and instead of using a piece of shrimp to cycle your tank maybe you could use a five year olds finger;D....did I just say that out loud? j/k. Sorry to hear about that happening, maybe its time for something covering the tank to prevent anymore accidents.
I have a daugter that is now 8 so I know what kids are capable of and how fast they can be.