baby shrimp emergency with flake food dumped in my tank

[Eclecticsoul]

Hi, I had a cycled, heavily planted 10 gallon tank containing 10 red cherry shrimp and 2 pair of endler's livebearers. Several of the shrimp were berried and the endlers looked as if they'd be having babies soon. My problem occured when one of my friends's out of control child
dumped a newly opened 7.06 oz container of Tetra Color Fish flake food in to the tank. The whole thing! These are the only shrimp I have and my favorite endler's so it was pretty upsetting to me. I wasn't sure exactly to do but this is what I did. Using my smallest syphon which is about 1" across, I've done probably half a dozen 70% water changes in an attempt to remove the food yesterday. I removed 4 of the shrimp, all the endlers and some of the plants. The heartbreaking problem for me now is that after several water changes I could see enough in the tank to notice that I had a lot of baby shrimplets in there. My first yet! I'm just sure many of them got syphoned out with all that food gunk. I also know I lost some baby enders but was able to rescue one. This morning the tank was cloudy and smelly again so I did another 70% change and cleaned the filter cartridge again as well. I've seen at least a dozen newborn shrimplets in there since the last water change.
Here's where I need some advice. There are still a lot of small pieces of flake food in the gravel. As these rot I know ammonia will build up. It was already beginning this morning when I checked. Should I try to remove any of the newborn shrimp with a turkey baster or keep up the water changes with them in there? Do I try to remove the food fragments from the gravel or leave them there and just change the water from one area of the tank? I keep an eye out for the babies now and try to keep the end of the syphon under the gravel, but these little guys are so small I'm concerned about them. It feels like this could not have happend at a worse time. My kids never did anything like this, so I was shocked. From now on my fish room door will be locked when they visit.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Eclecticsoul

[Mustafa]

Just saw this post, so I hope it's not too late. It's going to be impossible to fish out all the food from the gravel. Plus, by now the food has leached out all the nutrients into the water including the stuff that causes ammonia spikes. If you have taken out most of the food and done the water changes your filter should be able to deal with any ammonia that is left. By the way..don't be alarmed if you have ammonia in your water after water changes. There is ammonia directly in our water supplies (just check your tap water for ammonia) and even if there isn't much initially, ammonia gets freed up by water conditioners that break down chloramines. The conditioners, however, bind the ammonia so it's non-toxic and gets converted to nitrate quickly in a cycled aquarium. So...I would say that you should just leave the tank alone. If you have trumpet snails in your gravel, they will eat whatever flake food is in there...if not, then bacteria will break the food down.

[Eclecticsoul]

Thanks. It turned out fine. An added benefit was that I removed the endler fish I had in there and now the shrimp population is booming. I've decided to make it a shimp only tank now.

[Mustafa]

Thanks. It turned out fine. An added benefit was that I removed the endler fish I had in there and now the shrimp population is booming. I've decided to make it a shimp only tank now.

I'm glad everything turned out fine. By the way...this is exactly how the shrimp addiction starts. Pretty soon you'll want another tank with another species.