I have a 55gal reef tank. While I was on a weekend trip my two year old managed to dump a whole container of pellet food in my sump. By time my wife noticed it was too late. When I came home the whole tank was destroyed. I checked perimeters and ammonia was greater than 8.0, Nitrite .25 and Nitrate 0. The tank was well established and had two clown fish, a yellow tang, turbo snails, hermit crabs, and some coral. Everything was lost except a few hermit crabs. Brown algae has taken over that tank. I am wondering what do i need to do to recover from this. My 4" sand bed has turned black in many spots. Do i need to replace the sand bed or will it recover on its own once a complete water change out it performed? Also do I need to replace my LR. It appears that all life on my rock is dead. Please Help.
Tank Crash!!! What to do?
- Thread starter ChipDip
- Start date
buckster
New member
Do the largest water change you can do, at least 80%. Probably another water change a couple days later would be very beneficial. If you ever experience something like this again (hope you don't) I would not wait so long to do the water change. I always try to have some salt mix on hand and dechlorinator for emergency situations. When you have big NH4 spikes like you did, time is of the essence to get the NH4 down by water change. I hope your tank is already recovering and good luck.
mike_cmu04
New member
Just do large water changes and the tank should cycle and be ready to be restocked quickly
BluScrnOdeth
Darin Schmidt
Take otu the sand, clean it (rinse with water), 100% water change, and you'll be good in a few days.
coralnut99
New member
+1 skim the surface of the sand as best you can as you remove the old water. I would remove at least a half inch.
When my middle daughter was five or so, she had a friend over one day. My wife and I and the girl's mom kind of lost track of them for a few minutes and we found them in the fish room. I was breeding FW angelfish at the time and thankfully they only concentrated one tank. But I have to tell you we couldn't count the number of empty containers of everything from dechlorinator to copper to flake foods. In the five short minutes they "worked" on that tank it went completely opaque and the adult angelfish in there couldn't even be seen. Kids......ya gotta love 'em.
