Pico is crashing!

[Sonya]

So, my tank sitter overfed my one damsel. I get home from a 4day vacation and everything in my tank is shriveled and looking poor. Ammonia is at 4.0, nitrites are 2.0 nitrates are 40. Im going to vac the tank and do a water change but I believe its too late....no more trips for me.

 

[Huffers]

Sorry to hear that! Hopefully you can turn it around with some big water changes. For future reference though if you going on a short trip. (Less than a week) you really don't have to worry about feeding your fish. They would be ok.

 

[Sonya]

I give him 3 or 4 pellets a day. He must have dropped the container of food into the tank. I have globs of pellets surrounded with slime all over the tank. My 2 shrimp are dead and turbo snail is done too. I think I will have to take it apart to get all the dead stuff out......uuuugh.

 

[ktomminello]

That is horrible!! You poor thing... IMHO you should empty and clean, all things considered (pico) with, preferably, some good clean ro/di or distilled water. Nano and Pico tanks are my personal faves, but because of their sizes it's hard to get them cycled (impossible without some sort of instant cycle/ used bb colonized filter media or substrate, or stabilizer with nitrifying bacteria).
Best of luck on this one!! Good people do good things for animals... Thank you

 

[Sonya]

I am going to spend my hew years day tearing down my little tank. Dont see any way around it. I have never had a problem cycling my picos...hate using additive instant fix chemicals as there always seems to be a price to pay down the line...The only way is to give it sufficient time to do its thing! Happy New Year!

 

[ktomminello]

I am going to spend my hew years day tearing down my little tank. Dont see any way around it. I have never had a problem cycling my picos...hate using additive instant fix chemicals as there always seems to be a price to pay down the line...The only way is to give it sufficient time to do its thing! Happy New Year!

I'm not talking instant fix chemicals, more like a jumpstart of the bb colonizing, which will still take a long time, and be a pain in the butt!! My faves are Seachem Stability or Nutrafin cycle in combination with a Marcyn nitrifying cut to fit biofilter. Seems to work perfect on my small tanks (2 2.5g, 1 1g and both of my 10g). Just trying to help!! Good luck once again