Please HELP!!!!!!!!!!

[Catina]

I just noticed a pretty stagnant area under a piece of slate in my tank. There was a lot of old icky food under there that got stirred up. I'm worried! If my fish eat that food will they get sick? I'm going to do a water change first thing in the morning. I cranked up the pump to pump the max gallons per hour after that stuff got stirred up. I was looking for a missing fish, sadly I found him dead I would have done a water change right away but its now midnight. I'm soo worried about my other fish now. 7 cories and 4 guppies also a few fry. Could that nasty spot be making the fish ill? Please someone set my mind at ease

 

[Catina]

poor fish

 

[jcolon]

Oh I wouldn't worry ... There's plenty of other icky stuff in a tank for fish to eat. Give the area a good gravel vac , but there's plenty of places where food falls and goes unnoticed for up to days before a fish comes along.

This is why shrimp are good to have ... They love to feast on left over food and shrimp are masters at finding that stuff. They literally leave no stone unturned.

 

[Catina]

Oh, thank you! I'm going to do a real good clean up job tomorrow and look into some shrimp. Its a 30 gal and I have an aqua clear70 filtering it. I feel better now, I hopefully wont lose slleep over this now lol thank you again!

 

[jcolon]

Amano, ghost shrimp and or RCS should do the job nicely. All three are scavengers, though Amano and RCS also do algae. With Ghost and Amano you don't worry about them breeding. RCS breed like rabbits. Ghost are the least expensive of the three, but I'm not sure how they do with fry. RCS and Amano are harmless to fry.

 

[Autumnsky]

Check your feeding habits and what isn't getting eaten. I am an over feeder, trying to reform for the health of my aqua friends, lol. Also what type of food you are feeding, some have quite a bit of filler. I like Hikari foods, don't cloud the water. More nutrients are used up and less poop is eliminated. That is better too.

Japonica / Amano shrimp are hilarious critters and get bigger so not as frequently a snack for other fish. I have Cherry shrimp too and they are also fun to watch, but very small/ harder to see.

Dark substrate is my preference too, and I have a couple of white and black sand tanks.