Accidentally Put Too Much Fish Food Powder - Help

[Deleted member 107737]

Hi All,

 

If i accidentally put a bit too much of a pinch of fish food in my
tank, will the filter suck the uneaten food and get a ammonia spike??

 

 

Could i take this filter media and squeeze it in a bucket of dechlorinated water to rinse out the fish food??

 

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

 

[Dazzer87]

I'm sure it will have very little effect on an established filter. you could just skip a day's feed if your worried you over fed one day but I don't think there's anything to worry about

.

if you feel the need to clean the filter sponge; if it looks like its clogged up, ( doubt it would over a little excess food) its best to get a jug and take a liter of tank water to swill the sponge in and poor the dirty water away and put the sponge back in the filter.

 

[Deleted member 107737]

thanks Dazzer87

 

[MBOU]

Don't touch your filter, you need your filter to be working!
 
Do a 50% water change (siphoning out any uneaten food).
 
If you have a biological supplement/good bacteria.. it wont hurt to add a dose of that for a day or two (shush haters.. i said it wont hurt..) and don't feed fish for a day or two.

 

[Dazzer87]

Don't touch your filter, you need your filter to be working!
 
Do a 50% water change (siphoning out any uneaten food).
 
If you have a biological supplement/good bacteria.. it wont hurt to add a dose of that for a day or two (shush haters.. i said it wont hurt..) and don't feed fish for a day or two.

a bit drastic for "a bit too much of a pinch"? I could understand if you dropped the whole pot of food in or something?

 

[MBOU]

Hardly, a pinch has the capability to screw up a tank, especially if it is small.. a quick rinse to make sure filter isn't clogged up and a 50% water change will hurt nothing...
 
Which would you rather?
 
And that aside, how do you know how big a pinch is? better safe than sorry...

 

[Dazzer87]

well my understanding of pinch is that its quite small but I guess a pinch to others could mean a great big clump of food but anyway that was my thoughts for a minor excess amount of food. If it was excessive I agree although I would prob just siphon the mess and top-up. I'm not gonna disagree with better safe than sorry

 

[MBOU]

LOL when you hear horror stories every day... you stick with 'better safe than sorry'! the number of times someone has told me 'it was just a small kids handful of food that ended up going in tank' when really... they'd have been better off admitting it was an accident.. they weren't watching their kid and the entirety of a small tub of food went in...
 
I never believe a pinch is a pinch any more far to sceptical!! If i thought that doing a 50% water change would put tank at risk... if be more cautious... but not many cases where that is true thankfully!

 

[DreamertK]

I let my brother feed my fish one time, I told him specifically and multiple times "just a pinch!" and he put in a fistful of fishfood in. I used my net to catch a majority of it and let my fish eat the rest. You know, as long as it's not sitting at the bottom of the tank for hours it should be fine to just siphon the excess or scoop it out with a net.

 

[taffia1]

Don't use dechlorinated water to clean your media use old tank water or you'll have bigger issues than a bit of excess food

 

[techen]

Am fairly sure he knows that, But anyhow I'd listen to Mbou anytime. Knows more about fish than a lot of people :B

 

[davec1960]

Don't use dechlorinated water to clean your media use old tank water or you'll have bigger issues than a bit of excess food

Why, and what issues does it cause?

As a relative newbie I thought that the reason we used a bucket of the tank water we were removing was because it was being thrown away anyway and hence less wasteful and easier than dechlorinating a bucket of water that would be thrown away.

 

[MBOU]

Put simply, the bacteria in your filter are the most important things you have keeping your tank running...  but being living things, it is very possible to shock them! Shock by a difference in temperature, water parameters (ph, kh and all the others) and the risk that the dechlorinator hadn't yet mixed properly or worked...
 
Its just not worth risking the only thing keeping your tank stable and for the sake of grabbing a jug or bucket of water out the tank to clean filters (or just do it when doing a water change!) is a lot easy and a lot less risky.
 
You never want to risk the whole "did I remember to dechlorinate that water first!?" scare!