Fish WAY overfeed

[kilo90]

We have a 20 gallon tank and a 2 year old who was visiting dumped a new jar of tropical flakes in this afternoon. I removed the fish immediately and cleaned out half the water. I have put the fish back in, but there is still a great deal of food in there. A local petstore recommended changing the water 3 days in a row in effort to clean out the remaining food. Is this a good idea? Any other advice in the situation? My big concern is that they are going to die from overeatting. Don't know what the best course of action is at this point. Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer.

 

[fishfreek]

do you have a gravel spyhon? If so you should be able to get most of the uneaten food out that way buy just syphoning it off the top of the gravel.

water changes every day for several days is also a good idea as the ammonia will skyrocket of the food is not removed.

 

[kilo90]

We do have a gravel spyhon and changed half the water within 10 minutes of the "disaster". Suprisingly, much of the food had already begun to break up, so there was a great deal left in there. (I didn't want to change more than 1/2 the water at one time) We just changed the water again this morning because the ammonia level was high, so we'll see how that does. I'm concerned about how changing the water everyday will effect the overall levels in the tank. I guess you do what you have to do?!

 

[CRaZeeeBiTcHisH]

as long as you have been already doing regular water changes, your fish should be fine as long as you don't vary the temp too much--with regular water changes the new water shouldn't be way different than what he already has, and it will definately be better for him than ammonia! if you haven't been doing regular changes, then i would suggest smaller changes a couple of times a day......when i change my oscars water, i do very large changes, but they get them usually a couple of times a week, so they don't even stress it all.... 8)

 

[kilo90]

As a wrap up to our "tank emergency", everything went fine. By day 3, the tank appeared clear again. We did water changes 4 days in a row to get the levels back to normal. The fish didn't seem to be too bothered suprisingly. Thank you for the input to those of you who offered advice!