Tank disaster/Glitter incident

[neoclassical]

My 9 year old daughter dumped fine glitter into our 6.6 gal guppy tank (3 fish). It happened about 5 min before I got home. Long story short everything was removed, rinsed in hot water except the bio wheel from the Marineland filter (rinsed with Britta filter water). The ceramic bio media I had in the old filter and that I used to start the Marineland got rinsed with tap water by accident. All surfaces inside and out were wiped down, and the fish were rinsed in filtered water.

I set up the aquarium again with all new stuff. I rinsed and re rinsed the plants and have a few pebbles from the old set up. They are in another container of treated water, but rinsed in panic with tap water.

Did I lose all of my beneficial bacteria and looking at an ammonia spike when I have to be on vacation in a week?

Would adding the plants and a few pebbles from the disaster set up help?

My 7 year old would never forgive her if anything happened, and even I'm attached to my guppy and having fun with the tank until today. The tank had been set up for nearly 3 months.

Please help and thank you in advance.

I also added Tetra safe start which I used to establish the tank originally.

 

[Delapool]

Hi, welcome to the forum

I think that must be a first I have heard of but I think you may be ok (fingers crossed!).

Do you have a water test kit like API freshwater test kit? That will take out the guesswork and water changes (if needed) can be based off that. Really recommend this.

My thought is you will have lost some bacteria. How long has the tank been set up? There is a theory that the older the tank the more established / hardier the bacteria get.

The ceramic biomedia could be OK if a quick rinse. I run three filters and always clean the filter media under a hose on a rotating basis. I'm not recommending this approach but under more extreme testing I've never noticed an ammonia spike so your biomedia might be ok. However you have probably lost bacteria from other surfaces.

Water conditioners like seachem prime that temporarily detoxify ammonia are a good backup plan to water changes (just in case not aware).

 

[neoclassical]

I do not have a test kit. The tank had been set up for nearly 3 months. Because glitter gets onto everything I rinsed and wiped all the surfaces. I think she got jealous even though I was working hard to keep the tank going and keep the fish healthy for the kids.

The rinses depended on how stressed I was at the moment, but then everything sat dry as I cleaned and reset up the tank, and my wife ran to the pet store for new gravel/plants etc.

I used API water conditioner (usually do with all my added water during changes) and the Tetra safe start to start the tank again.

Maybe she just thought it would look nice, but I know she has more common sense. One was her fish.

Thank you for your response, I just can't believe a kid that won't kill a bug would do this.

 

[Delapool]

Ah, kids

I really would pick up at least an ammonia test kit if you can. Or perhaps your fish shop can do a water test and that way you will know if there is a problem.

That must of been a huge job getting the glitter out!!

 

[neoclassical]

It was maybe a half tsp of glitter. Surprisingly it mostly floated on top of the water. The fish seem fine so far. I'm getting a test kit tomorrow. I don't see any residual glitter and yes, it was quite the job to clean up. It took hours before I got the fish back in the tank.

 

[Scottishscales]

I would say as long as your filter media didn't dry out your going to have a bacteria setback but not a total loss. If it did get dry I would watch it and keep checking for re-cycling because drying out media kills the bacteria.

Good luck with your tank.

"There's always a bigger fish." - Qui-Gon Ginn

 

[neoclassical]

Thanks for your help. I did another 10% change and even with all my cleaning I still pulled out a few grains of glitter. THis particular glitter was finer that beach sand. Everyone seems to be ok. I'm waiting for my local store to get in more test kits. The last couple times I was there I didn't see THE aquarium guy, just some random employees.