Best Way To Deal With This?

[Spishkey]

i have a 28L heavily planted show tank which contains baby crayfish and my best of the best guppy males

now my darling son decided to help me feed them and poured a whole tub of spirulina (sp) granules in there

now ive done two water changes and a decent gravel vac, but its very difficult to vac with all the plants and i dont want to disturb them too much

now i can see there is still a lot of granules in there but do not want to empty the whole tank, rinse gravel etc as it would destroy months of work with the planting.

what is the best way to go about cleaning that is safe for the fish and crayfish (some of the crayfish are just 1 day old so very small and will easily get damaged)? will daily/twice daily water changes be enough or does the solid waste all have to come out asap??

 

[Colin_T]

You have to get all the food out ASAP otherwise it will cause an ammonia spike that will probably kill the crayfish. The best way is with a gravel cleaner and just syphon the excess food out. You could try a fine mesh net and scoop the bigger bits out. Then syphon out the rest. Most of the food should be on the bottom so shouldn't be too hard to remove. But there is a big chance you will suck out some of the baby crays.
If you can't get it all out then just continue with your twice daily water changes for at least a week. You can do big water changes too, ie: 50-75% or even more. Just make sure any new water is free of chlorine and has a similar temperature & PH before it is added to the tank.
You should monitor the ammonia and nitrite levels for the next couple of weeks and do water changes if necessary.

 

[Spishkey]

ok thanks
its very hard to get all the food out without disturbing the plants, its literally jam packed full of roots down there and the baby crays live among these

will syphon the dirt as it comes to the clear bits between the plants and keep up with the water changes.

should i just test for ammonia daily or nitrite/nitrate as well?

 

[Colin_T]

test ammonia and nitrite daily and don't bother about nitrate until the problem has been sorted out.
Nitrate test kits will read nitrite as nitrate and give you a false reading so it is pointless doing that test when there is nitrite in the water.