unexpected vacation

[gi4get]

with the passing of hurricane izzy, my school lost power for five days and the students were forced to go home. between my boyfriend and i, we have three betta (two male, one female), three cardinal tetras (had four, lost one and only one through this whole mess!), one guppy and two shrimp. we packed everybody up (the bettas in their individual bowls, everybody else in a cooler) and drove home leaving our tanks inactive for a week. we only lost one fish and he was a suicide case (jumped from the cooler and landed on the floor 3-4 feet below). i know cardinals are very sensitive fish and i was expecting to lose all of them (very happy i didn't ). my issue is this; i have a five gal. tank, previously uncycled, that has now been sitting for a week with no filtration, etc. it looks fine except for cob-web-like stuff covering everything including the walls, decorations, gravel, etc. my boyfriend has a cycled ten gal. with a similar problem. anyone know what this stuff is? is it good, bad, or just ugly? is it harmeful or can i toss some otos in it for clean up duty (i'd keep them of course)? will they even touch the stuff? anyone else have a similar story? i haven't tested any water levels though i plan to. i'll post results when i can.

 

[Inchworm]

Oh, no!!!! A loss of power is the worst thing that can happen!!!! I feel so sorry for you. I went through a similar thing recently when New York lost its power, so I can understand what must have been going through you mind when it comes to the fish. I was more lucky though; the power came back on the next day so I had no losses.

I won't try to advise you about the stuff in your tank because I don't really know what it is or whether all your bacteria is dead. But, if you do have to restart your tanks, I would suggest going to your lfs to see if they would give or even sell you some cycled water and/or gravel to begin with. They often have generators to keep them going in emergencies and that would give you a head start on the process. While this is something you would not usually want to do, they might help in a time like this.

Good luck to you and your boyfriend. Please let us know how this turns out.

 

[gi4get]

Good luck to you and your boyfriend. Please let us know how this turns out.

will do. thankfully my losses were not from the power. if you've had experiences like ours, how did you cope?

 

[Inchworm]

gi4get,

When I was cleaning out one of my tanks today, I looked down into the filter (the part where the intake tube goes to the impeller) and gues what I saw? Yep, cobwebs! So, since the tank is perfectly fine with them, they will probably not cause you any problem, either. I wish I had done this yesterday so that if your chemistry turned out ok you would have been at ease with just doing a partial water change and cleaning.

What did you do?

You asked what I did in the power failure. Well, not knowing how long it would last, I gave each my tanks a partial water change to have them in good shape at the start. Then I dropped bags of ammo-chips into each tank to absorb some of the ammonia the fish would be producing; I was hoping to slow the whole process down.

From time to time I manually aerated the tanks by scooping out cupfulls of water and pouring it from a height to expose as much of it as I could to the air. Oh, I also unplugged everything to prevent an accidental overload when the electricity came back on. This is important, too, for the filters, (power filters) because if you are not there when they come on, they could run without water in them and burn out.

I was never so happy to see the electricity come back on!

 

[tonkatruck]

that happened to me when hurricane isabel came through.. we had no generator and the lights were out for 3 days! we got a generator on the last day and they let me hook up my tank so i could let some water filter and turn the heater on! it went to 75 degrees.. reg temp is 80... i had 5 blankets covering my 55 gallon! i was so worried about them!

 

[Inchworm]

Hi there, tonkatruck

After that scare with the blackout I was a kind of worried about the hurricane. Fortunatly, by the time it got here it had fizzled out and all we really got was rain.

It's just terrible to know the fish are dependant on you to live and there's not really much you are able to do for them. It makes you feel really helpless, doesn't it?

 

[gi4get]

When I was cleaning out one of my tanks today, I looked down into the filter (the part where the intake tube goes to the impeller) and gues what I saw? Yep, cobwebs! So, since the tank is perfectly fine with them, they will probably not cause you any problem, either. I wish I had done this yesterday so that if your chemistry turned out ok you would have been at ease with just doing a partial water change and cleaning.

thanks for the advice inchworm. i didn't really know what to do so i pulled and rinsed all the decorations and did a gravel cleaning. did a roughly thrity percent water change and replaced everything. i tested the water before messing with anything and all was well (except for the pH-7.6!). ammonia-0, nitrites-0, nitrates-0. yesterday i went on ahead and added my three cardinals, two shrimp, and one lone guppy to the tank. the cardinals have gotten their personality back and the guppy's still eating like a horse. everybody looks healthy.

as for my boyfriend's ten gal....we did a complete overhaul. he had some problems with disease and was worried about reaccurances. we pulled and rinsed all the decorations as we did with my tank. we drained all the water and rinsed the gravel (dog job! ). we rinsed all of the tubing and scrubbed off all the grudge on the tank walls. we set everything back up, refilled the tank, and arranged the decorations. we've decided on the "au natural" look so it's all wood and live plants. it's up and running but with no fish. we're going to let it run for a little while to settle and then maybe try adding his female betta to it. we know she'd love a ten gal. to play in but we don't want to lose her. the tank is needing to be recycled and we'll take that into consideration.

It's just terrible to know the fish are dependant on you to live and there's not really much you are able to do for them. It makes you feel really helpless, doesn't it?

it makes me feel like a helpless parent though it gives more reason to do everything possible to help.