HELP!!! Bag of pellet food spilled into 75g tank

[C5Chad]

Like the title states.... I was in a rush doing things tonight trying to do two things at once and I accidentally bumped my open bag of dry pellet fish food into my 75g reef tank as I was cleaning the inside of glass of the tank! I’m pretty much freaking out at this point at what to do. Hundreds of pellets fell in and floating around, landing on corals, rock, sand bed. I have a few hermit crabs and several snails in my tank and a conch snail and a sand sifting starfish as well as a watchman goby, clownfish, Royal gramma, and a cardinalfish.... but I mean there are hundreds of pellets in the tank now.

I had 20gallons of reef salt RODI water prepared for a water change tomorrow after work. What do I do!!!!??!? I’m freakin out I just possibly destroyed my tank

 

[aznflyfisherman]

You can get a turkey bastor n try to suck the pellets out as much u can. That would be your best choice n water change if need too..

 

[Cliving1]

Manual removal would probably be best.

 

[Scott07]

If they're small enough pellets, some airline tubing may work to siphon them out one by one without removing tons of water in the process.

I feel for you.... hang in there, no sense beating yourself up over an accident.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Go to the hardware store and get a small diameter hose to use as a siphon (1/4" inside diameter maybe). Also a 5 gallon bucket, and some cheesecloth or a filter sock.

Put the filter sock into the bucket and start a siphon, dumping through the sock into the bucket. Siphon all the food out. The water will end up in the bucket, the food will get caught in the filter sock.

Every time the bucket starts to get full, just dump the water back in the tank.

Once you've gotten it all out, or as much as you can, just relax. Let things sit for a few hours or a day, and check nutrients. Siphon again if you see more food. Do a water change if nutrients start to go up.

 

[C5Chad]

Thanks guys.... at the moment been working with what I had on hand since it’s late in the evening here, 9pm. Tried using a turkey blaster but the pellets kept falling back out. So I got my siphon tube that I use for water changes which is about maybe half inch in diameter to just vacuum the sand in the areas I could reach. What’s bugging me is I can see and tell that pellets fell into crevices underneath my rock which are hard to get to and don’t want to move my coral and rock landscape to get to it and disturb anything.

Relaxing night turned completely stressful just because of a dumb mistake. Will be doing a 20 gallon water change tomorrow, and maybe go to the lfs and get a few more crabs. Tank has been going so great and looking incredible all year since I set it up.... don’t want it to get ruined

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

It won't get ruined! This isn't as big a deal as it sounds. Worst case, do large water changes every day for a week or so, or until nutrients calm down.

Most of us have done this at one point in the past. I know I have. After my first food spill, I adopted a new technique. The food container is never allowed above the rim of the tank. If I need to set it down, I set it down away from the tank, or on a shelf or ledge below the rim of the tank. When I'm feeding, I take a pinch out of the container, versus holding the whole container over the tank. I know this won't help you right now, but maybe it'll give people something to think about to avoid this in the future.

 

[C5Chad]

It won't get ruined! This isn't as big a deal as it sounds. Worst case, do large water changes every day for a week or so, or until nutrients calm down.

Most of us have done this at one point in the past. I know I have. After my first food spill, I adopted a new technique. The food container is never allowed above the rim of the tank. If I need to set it down, I set it down away from the tank, or on a shelf or ledge below the rim of the tank. When I'm feeding, I take a pinch out of the container, versus holding the whole container over the tank. I know this won't help you right now, but maybe it'll give people something to think about to avoid this in the future.

Yeah I'll definitely never do that again. I'm going to do a 30 gallon water change tomorrow and keep an eye on the tank. I don't want an algae outbreak, it's stayed algae free since I set the tank up almost a year ago for the most part

 

[rdnyva]

You can also attach an appropriate sized hose to a small pump like a maxi jet and blow the remaining pellets out of the crevices to somewhere you can collect them.

 

[jayball]

Go to the hardware store and get a small diameter hose to use as a siphon (1/4" inside diameter maybe). Also a 5 gallon bucket, and some cheesecloth or a filter sock.

Put the filter sock into the bucket and start a siphon, dumping through the sock into the bucket. Siphon all the food out. The water will end up in the bucket, the food will get caught in the filter sock.

Every time the bucket starts to get full, just dump the water back in the tank.

Once you've gotten it all out, or as much as you can, just relax. Let things sit for a few hours or a day, and check nutrients. Siphon again if you see more food. Do a water change if nutrients start to go up.

This. If you have a sump you can keep the return pump running and just drain into a sock in the sump. Great way to take care of any hair algae that shows up because of this too. Just keep the siphon going for as long as you want while you pluck the hair and drop it down the syphon tube.