I just found out about this thread since I'm just now getting back to my PMs. I'm sorry for all of us who have lost fish and plants thanks to Ike. I'm back up and running with some losses, but nothing I can't recover from. Tex_Gal has very generously offered some trimmings for me, and I have decided to accept since I'm having a problem with too little plant mass for the light I need to run.
Pedro, if you read this, one of my biggest losses was the Rotala you sent me. I haven't completely given up on it yet. It has no leaves at all now, but the stems are still green so I'm hoping it can sprout back out again. I think it had time to get some roots before Ike hit.
As far as fish, the two favorites that I lost was an apisto and a torpedo barb.
I had just scaped my tank a couple of weeks before Ike hit so many of my plants didn't have established roots, but they had enough to hang in there. It looks like I'll lose all of my Blyxa japonica. It was bad enough that I had just planted it and my torpedo barbs kept pulling it up (nibbling on the ends), but the loss of power have almost done them in. I still have a few sprigs that are about 1/2" above the substrate. No growth, but I'm still hoping they're trying to grow roots to survive.
I've learned a few things that I want to pass along to others since the area in which we live may cause this to happen again some time.
First, I
strongly recommend this particular
Penn-Plax battery air pump. It's not silent at all, but it ran for
over 4 days on
one set of batteries! Highly impressive! I did use a different air stone than they supplied, but another person said he got similar results when he used his. I had 2 of these pumps in place for my 2 larger tanks. One finally stopped after running continuously for 4-1/2 days while the other one was still going strong. To get that many days of air in a tank on just 2 D-cell batteries is fabulous! The air was so strong that it not only aerated the tanks, but it broke up the surface enough to keep it from developing a film.
Should I lose power like this again, I will pull out all my media from my canisters, rinse in tank water, and then put inside my tanks to keep the bacteria alive. I'd then drain the hoses. Then pull it all off and give it a good cleaning. That way, the bacteria in the canister media would not die, and when I could power up the canisters again, there would be no aerobic bacteria in the hoses or canisters.
Personally, I'm planning to get a generator so this can't happen again. I was juggling 10 tanks, all of which have plants and 4 of which have fish. All I did was worry and run around doing massive water changes to keep the tanks going. I'm going to stock up on those air pumps and get a generator so I will be prepared to keep my tanks going and to help others with my spare tanks.
No damage to house, just the fence is down. Hope everyone is safe. Oh, I can also meet with anyone in the friendswood, clear lake area over the weekend.
