Cloudy Tank

[GroggoftheNorth]

Yesterday, my three year old daughter decided she needed to feed the fish. When I came into the kitchen to see what she was up to I discovered fish food everywhere. On the counter, on top of the tank, all over the aquarium's plants, decorations and gravel. It felt like the entire bottom of tank was covered in fish food.

After calming down, I got out my gravel vacuum and started trying to clean the tank. I may be a novice but I'm know that leaving all that uneaten food there was not going end well.

This morning when I turned on the aquarium's light the tank water was cloudy. Not so murky that I couldn't see into the tank but enough that I could tell something was off. Plus, the dead Neon Tetra was a big hint.

Could I have over vacuumed? Is it possible that I was already too late when I began to clean up the fish food? I'm pretty sure I got all of the food but its color is very similar to the gravel. Is there something I can add to the tank to help sort things out? I have another healthy tank that my daughter, thankfully, did not try to feed. Should I move some substrate and water from the healthy tank to the cloudy tank? Or am I going to have to cross my fingers and hope for the best?

Thank you!



PS: I hope this is the write sub-forum. Please accept my apologies if I posted in the wrong spot.

 

[Coralocean]

Have you tested your water for ammonia?

 

[GroggoftheNorth]

Just used a test stripe and the Nitrates and Nitrites are safe.

 

[flitabout]

Test strips are in acurate at best. You will need to test for Ammonia. Also you may need to do several water changes to get all of the food out. Try another 50% water change then retest. The best test kit is the API master liquid kit.

 

[King Fisher]

As mentioned.... testing the water will answer a lot of your questions. But if you can't and you seem to be in a pinch if fish are dying......do a couple of 25% water changes every day until the water clears. Allow about 6 hours or more between water changes.

 

[GroggoftheNorth]

Sorry for the delay in responding. Yesterday was a bunch of activity, tank wise.

After seeing more fish loss in the fish tank, my wife and I fished out the survivors and moved them to our large aquarium in the living room. In the dirty tank we pulled out all the decorations and carefully dug up the plants. We then vacuumed the tank many times until we got all of the crud out of tank. Even with me having cleaned it when I discovered what my youngest daughter did, there was still a bunch of food under the plants! Now we have the fish tank cycling and trying to get everything settled and re-established before we return any fish to that tank.

On the plus side, my eldest is doing her Water Journey for Girl Scouts. So this provided us an excellent example of water pollution and its affects on wild life!