Hurricane IKE

Amen. Did all my water changes tonight. Hope everyone is safe.

Stay safe guys!

Best possible vibes going out to our NASH brothers and sisters. DFWAPC is thinking of you.

Let us know how you guys are doing down there.

I am somewhere in Europe now. I also pray everyone is okay in Houston, although I know Galveston has been hit the hardest. I hope the people there are also fine now, aside from doing all the clean-ups and rescues if there need be any. So bros and sisters in NASH, let me know!

We are fine. But my plants and livestock may not do well after power outage with Ike's landfall early Sat night. Doing partial water changes and feeding lightly only every 2nd day and hoping for the best.

For those with more experience, how do you keep the filters running during a long term outage? I assume lights will be out of question unless you want to run a generator.

Hope everyone else is doing OK.

Nice to hear from someone in hoston. I have been trying to reach a friend and nothing.
So how is the recovery effort going? Lots of damage?

Hey Pedro:

Most of Houston has no power and some have no water also. Gas and food hard to come by for many. We prepared ahead of time and have propane, some gas to run a little generator and food. We are lucky to have running water. RO/DI system came in really handy with the mandatory boil water recommendation from the city.

In my neighborhood, lots of downed trees and fences but no flooding or major damage to houses.

Thank goodness for the cool front.

If it were me I would unplug the filters so they can't suddenly come back on again. If you can, save some dirty filter floss or something in a mesh bag in the main tank. That would help recycle the tank when the electricity comes back on, but I wouldn't just let the filters sit there stagnant, growing who knows what-all in them.

Wishing everyone the best. Let us know if we can do anything.

CherylR said:

If it were me I would unplug the filters so they can't suddenly come back on again. If you can, save some dirty filter floss or something in a mesh bag in the main tank. That would help recycle the tank when the electricity comes back on, but I wouldn't just let the filters sit there stagnant, growing who knows what-all in them.

Wishing everyone the best. Let us know if we can do anything.

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Thanks for the tip!. The Eheim is unplugged. I will give the media a brief rinse before restart.
For the future, I was looking at one of these http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/182/p/1/pt/29/product.asp to run the filters for say 12 hrs a day. The power consumption of the Ehiem 2234 is relatively low so I might be able to get it to last for a week.

Today is day 5 and we don’t have electricity! I am running my last set of batteries for my fish. I have not been able to do water changes either so PLEASE if you live in Houston and you have D batteries please let me know if you want to sell them I have lost many fish and my plants are in such bad shape that the aquarium water is smelling bad already.
I will be in the south west area today9/17/2008
Luis Navarro

Luis, Apart from Fish and plants , I hope everything is alright. I think Geoff on Houstonfish box has inverters and D-cells he is offering to help boxers.

I'm glad you're all right. We've heard that the Senskes are fine too, but no power either at home or at the gallery.

Would it help to periodically dip some water out of the tank and pour it back in from high up, to disturb the water and add oxygen?

I am not sure if this will work, but what about Hydrogen peroxide use to oxygenate water?

Luis, if you need batteries and mail is working let me or Nikolay know.
We can get you some and send it to you.

Thank you Pedro I will call you guy's if i run out of options, I was lucky to find some so I think I have enough for the next 20 hours.
I will keep you posted.
Luis

Hey guys and gals. Bryce started a thread to help out anyone who has to chalk up a loss of their aquariums. Maybe better to wait until power resumes, but I suppose if you need batteries by mail, then there are other people willing to chip in. Maybe post needs in that thread as well?

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...5514-aquarium-drive-hobbyists-ike-s-path.html

-Dave

By the way, has anyone heard from Glenn (The old man) ? He lives in Friendswood, not sure how bad that area got hit or if the power is out there as well.

Well I got power last night finally! I am blessed!

Bad news: My HC carpet melted and all my tigers and Amano's died :crybaby:.

Good news: The embers (I got from Pedro) and the otos are still alive! One ember jumped out of the tank sometime when we were in the dark. Otherwise they look OK also. Bylxa, Anubias are OK, I think.

I did a massive water change, sucked out as much of the dead HC as I could, rinsed out the media and restarted everything back up.

Luis:

Sent you a PM re inverter/battery pack.

I had a 99% survival rate of plants and fish in my tanks.

For my big planted tank I took the UPS from my computer, and plugged it in. Every few hours I would plug the filter in for 10-15 min then turn it off, just to keep the filter working well. When my power came back on a few days later, no ammonia, no nitrites, and only a little nitrates.

For my other tanks, I couldn't really run the filters, so I used a whisk to aerate them every few hours. It sounds silly, but it worked...

krisvalkyrie said:

I had a 99% survival rate of plants and fish in my tanks.

For my big planted tank I took the UPS from my computer, and plugged it in. Every few hours I would plug the filter in for 10-15 min then turn it off, just to keep the filter working well. When my power came back on a few days later, no ammonia, no nitrites, and only a little nitrates.

For my other tanks, I couldn't really run the filters, so I used a whisk to aerate them every few hours. It sounds silly, but it worked...

Click to expand...

I thought of using the UPS, but constant noise would have only added to the misery (darkness, hot/humid, loud generators outside, beeping inside). In hindsight, the best solution IMO was to use those lead acid battery packs used to jump start cars + a small power inverter. Even though I had both I used it to run the TV for short periods of time, charge cell phones, etc. - need to get an extra one.

My Ecco 2234 consumes only 5 watts of power according to the specs. There is probably a way to calculate the how long the batter pack of a given capacity will last but it escapes me right now. Hoppy - if you are reading this can you comment??

A generator is probably the best option if you want to keep the tank lights running too.

However, I think running the filters may not have necessarily helped when the plants start to rot/melt. HC just does not do well without light. You probably get a really anaerobic environment resulting in H2S release.