Gamer

Hurricane Hannah, while not as bad as Gustuv, is bad enough and is expected to hit my area come Friday. My only concern is what if our power goes out for a few days. What to do about my aquariums which will no doubt fill up with toxins fast from lack of filtration. We have a power generator but we've got to plug alot of other important things such as a refridgerator.

Shawnie

I wish you well during the storm!!!!!! be safe no matter what...when we lost our power for 3 days, all I could do was change water out a bit at a time..using prime to neutralize as much as I could, then doing 30% changes .....it was horrible because we had it heated for the first day to keep the temps the same but on day 2 and 3 , we had to warm it up on our grill to make sure it was close ...also periodically pour some treated water into your filter to keep it moist...letting it dry out would mean loosing your cycle.....goodluck ....I wish you well !!

Slug

Where you located Gamer, i'm in the same boat.

sirdarksol

Your planted tanks should do okay for a bit. The extra surface area of the plants act as biological media for nitrifying bacteria, and the plants themselves will soak up some nitrates.

Shawnie has good ideas to keep things going during the downtime, especially if the outage extends for days.

Slug

I live inland about an hour, hour and a half from Charleston, 3 hours from the NC line so i'm not terribly worried.....as we have underground powerlines where i live. But you never know.

Thankfully my Drill weekend was canceled this time around because of the hurricane.

sirdarksol

That's good, though it only takes one large-scale transformer going out to strip an area of power for awhile.

COBettaCouple

Battery powered air pumps could help some, and if you are able to, stock up on as many jugs of distilled water as you can, fill the tub, etc.. all those things they say to do for preparing for a storm, just extra for more water for the water changes. If the power does go out a while, drop the filter media in the tank to keep it wet.

Gamer

Thanks for the tips folks. I live in Volusia County and it now appears Hannah won't be hitting my area too hard but Ike, probably will and that's a strong one. We also don't know if Josephene could come out way or not. If any do, I'll be prepared.

clinton1621

If the power is out for a long period of time (like in the winter up north here) I always drop the filter media into the tank, then I use a battery powered air pump and put the bubblestones directly around the media... this keeps a constant flow of water and oxygen through the media, thus keeping the bacteria in them alive indefinitely =)

Slug

Ah ok, i know a guy from DeLand FL.

Now it looks like Hannah is gonna hit us in SC.