Aquarium drive for hobbyists in Ike's path

I was just told about this thread. I may take some of you up on your offers.

I have 10 tanks running, 4 with fish. They vary in size from 2.5g to 75g. All tanks have plants.

I have been without power since Ike hit, and it looks like I may not get power back on until next week. I'm able to get online now because I'm in a hotel room.

I have a house and an apartment, and fortunately, neither suffered structural damage. We lost a lot of tree limbs at the house, one tree split off a main section onto our fence and neighbor's house. The fence will need to be replaced. I think the neighbor's house only suffered gutter damage, thankfully.

My tanks are going from bad to worse. The 4 tanks with fish are:

• 2.5g has 25 young Borasas brigittae (Pedro, these are from you; I'm doing my best to keep them alive.)
• 5g with my RCS colony, 7 mature Borasas and 2 pygmy corys (1 cory died)
• 20Long with loaches, ottos, guppies, many amano shrimp, and nerite snails.
• 75g with 5 Pelvicachromis, 1 apisto (I think it's dead; can't find it now), 9 Torpedo Barbs (one confirmed dead), about 50 amano shrimp, nerite snails, guppies, and 30 cardinal tetras

I have a battery air pump on my 20L and 75g tanks. I do have water that appears to be good (it hasn't killed the fish yet) so that's saving me right now.

My main problem is that the power has been off long enough now that the plants, algae and good bacteria are all dying, converting into ammonia. I'm doing 80%-100% water changes daily, but I need to step that up. The water becomes cloudy and smelly in 24 hours so things are getting worse.

Others at TPT are suggesting I pull out all of my plants which I really don't want to do, but maybe I should. Doing so will certainly kill many of them so I'm not sure what's best in the long run. If I can keep up with the water changes to keep the ammonia down, maybe I can salvage more plants if I leave them where they are. I'm also concerned with how the removal of plants would affect the hiding places for the fish, with the Pelvicachromis being dwarf cichlids.

I've lost one pygmy cory, one (maybe more) torpedo barb and most likely my apisto.

My main concern is the nitrifying bacteria dying. I have two canisters on my 75g and one on my 20L which I think are toast (bacteria wise) by now. I have unplugged them so they won't come on in my absence because I think I'll have to clean them out to "new" condition and start all over without any good bacteria. Getting these tanks to cycle again with a heavy fish load will also be a problem which is another reason I really don't want to lose too many plants since they will help with the ammonia once the lights come on and they can begin growing again.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. For now, large water changes is what's keeping my fish alive, and it looks like I'll have to go from 1 large water change a day to at least 2. I might go for 3 smaller ones (50% each) to help avoid temperature changes and fish stress.

Right now, I can't even think of getting any clippings, but once my power is back on, I would very much appreciate help in restocking the plants I've lost. Between losing everything in our refrigerators and freezers (at both locations), having the trees repaired with the large branches hauled off, fixing our neighbor's house, and now paying for a hotel room, this is costing us. We still have it much better than many others, but having no power is really hurting my tanks.

I live in Houston and in my area we had trees fall and many branches break off trees, lost a large section my fence and had high flooding. Water came about three inches from getting in the house. Had to go out early in the morning and open my back gates to allow the water to rush to the front yard witch water level was a little lower. Side yard was a flowing river. Water was out for a couple days and the power just came back on after a army of power workers swept threw my neighborhood today. One street over had big time problems and wont get electricity until mid October.

I had one tank do alright and all fish survived and the plants will make it. My other tank wasnt as fortunate. It is a 20 gallon and I lost 5 red skirt tetras, 3 hatchet fish, a black neon and 6 neon tetras. This was a more recent set up so it wasn't well established so I think that factored in the many deaths. The plants are not looking good and I know I will loose some of them. If any one would like to donate anything I would be appreciate. thanks

Batterup, I'm sorry to hear your 20g suffered so many loses. Hopefully, someone has PMed you with some help.

I think it's the newness of the tanks that caused the biggest problems. While my 75g isn't new by any means, the scape was new so all of the plants were trying to settle in when Ike hit. Fortunately, my losses weren't terrible, but I did lose a few. Mostly, I'm seeing sick looking growth. Now that I have everything back to normal, some of the plants are beginning to spit out some healthy growth. So I'll have to let the healthy growth get taller, then I can cut that off and use it to restart the plants.

I want to thank everyone here for being so kind with your offers! I am taking up an offer from someone on another board, and I may accept an offer in a PM from here. I'm having problems with having too little plant mass. So if I turn on my full lights as some of my plants need, there's not enough plant mass to fend off the algae. But if I don't use my bright lights, then the plants that need it grow poorly and slowly.

If you don't get any help, let me know because I do have some plants (well, crypts) in my 20L that are established and doing well. I can part with some of them. They are slow growers, though, but are very hardy. Just let me know.