Help!! Massive food dump into tank. Ideas?

I've got a 5-ish year old 120 gallon setup. Well, when we go away for a weekend or travel for a week for work, I break out the automatic feeder. Well, I've been traveling a lot (for work and weekends) so the automatic feeder has been getting a lot of use lately.

Anyway, and I am glad that the timing happened when it did. I was actually home last night, and I happened to be in my "office" about 15 feet away working on stuff and everything was fine. 45 minutes later I step out, and the tank is cloudy as heck. The dumb feeder was just spinning and spinning and completely dumped about a 3/4 full canister of food into the tank.

So here is what I did and what my plan is, let me know what else I should do.

1) Used a net and gathered up as much of the large pellets as possible (using a powerhead and turkey baster to try to get things out from on and around rocks)
2) Turned off the main pump, cleaned out the filter sock
3) Vacuumed out the one side of the sump that got dirty when the filter sock started clogging up and overflowing
4) I added some Ammo-Lock as everything in the tank was looking really stressed.
5) Then I did an "as large as I could do" water change of 40 gallons of RO/DI, sucking up as much of the finer bits that I could get.
6) I then did a double dose of Prime as well (based off of tank volume, not "new water" volume since this is an emergency.
7) I am skimming a bit wetter than usual.
8) I added a bag of carbon to the sump by the pump intake to try to increase flow.
9) I added a basic 30 gallon hang on filter with some fresh carbon as well.
10) Tonight I plan on another 40 gallon water change and I grabbed some clear tubing that I am going to hook up to a smaller powerhead to reach down behind some of the liverock so that I can blow out anything trapped and suck it up with the water change tube.
11) I will repeat the RO/DI water changes over the next few days.
12) Repeat the Prime dosing for a few days (although I am still trying to figure out if that is every 24 hours or something else.

I know that some of these will have little potential impact (such as the 30 gallon hang on filter), but I just felt like every little bit helps. I also dosed with Ammo-Lock first as I forgot that I had a brand new bottle of Prime sitting in my home office (the Ammo-Lock is back in our back room where I have all of my other fish stuff). I also put it in before the water change just to try to reduce the toxicity while working, knowing that I was removing 40 gallons of treated (but dirty) water.

I will keep logging my water parameters through the process. I just did a 40 gallon water change this past Saturday, put in a clean filter sock, recently did a deep clean on my skimmer, vacuumed the sump, etc, so I was starting with a pretty "clean" tank before this happened.

Oh, and I know that Prime and Ammo-Lock don't remove the ammonia, nitrite, or nitrates. Right now, I am just looking for the detox capabilities while I continue water changes and let the large amount of live rock start tackling things "naturally."

What am I missing?

 

Thanks. Always worried that there is that "one thing" that I'm not thinking about.

I should also note that snails, my emerald crab, and fish were out an active this morning before work. Even the basic corals I have were looking better this morning (not normal, but better) than last night. Hopefully things will turn back around quickly.

I also know what caused this... Murphy... and his dumb law. I was just pointing out to my daughter how the one green leather that is in my tank (about 8 inches tall and maybe 4 inches wide) was just a tiny 1/8" x 1/2" sliver about a year ago... That was about 20 minutes before all heck broke loose.

 

I've tried cheato in the past and could never get it to grow. I do have a small clump of calurpa but it never grows. Just stays the same size. I've tried 3 different types of light, including a custom LED set of lights designed for growing saltwater plants. I wonder if it is because there isn't enough room for it to tumble around due to the amount of smaller pieces of live rock in the sump...

 

Yeah, for normal maintenance frequent smaller water changes are best, but most people agree that large water changes for catastrophic situations is the fastest way to get things closer to normal.

If someone does a 50% water change all at once, any "bad" parameter is cut in half right then. If that person does five 10% water changes, it not only takes longer, but it also does not drop the "bag" parameter in half since every water change you are effectively removing some of the positive impact of the previous small water change(s). I think that this math is correct. If you have 100% of something that you want to get rid of. A 10% water change will drop that to 90% "polluted." If you do another 10% water change 2 hours later, you are now 81% polluted (assuming that things don't get worse), another 10% water change has you down to just under 73%, and continue for five 10% water changes. Not only has this now taken 8 hours of time between the water changes, but you are still 59% polluted.

Right or wrong, that has been my thought on why the larger changes now. Maintenance mode definitely should be smaller changes more frequently as it is more subtle changes to all parameters (pH, trace elements, temperature, etc). Heck last night I was still a bit surprised to see how much "fine dirt" I was sucking out of the tank. Ammonia was down to about 0.25 ppm last night after hitting .50 ppm, and if the live rock does its thing, I am hoping to see that drop even more before I get home tonight to do another swap. If things are "looking good" and the ammonia levels start to drop on their own, then I will slow down the size of the water changes to start to get back into maintenance mode.

As for the feeder it is an EHEIM "Everyday Fish Feeder" like this one:

Amazon.com : EHEIM Everyday Fish Feeder Programmable Automatic Food Dispenser : Pet Self Feeders : Pet Supplies

This is my second unit. My first lasted me about 4 years before it got accidentally bumped off of the top of the tank and hit the ground and broke. I never had an issue with it before. This one was on the original cheapo batteries that it came with, but wasn't THAT old. Maybe 3-4 months old.