Help! Power will be out for 3 days!

[Drstrangelove]

I lost power (suddenly as a matter of fact) for several days to two tanks before. (They were a 55 and 75.) I didn't do anything special partly because it was decades ago and I had no idea what I could do.

I left them alone (no feeding), didn't change any water, didn't do anything special with the filters and didn't have a problem. Maybe I was very lucky, but I don't think 2-3 days is a big deal as long as room temps are decent (75+) and you stop feeding them asap.

I can't speak for the turtles, frogs or shrimp since all I had were fish at the time.

I do think a lot of the suggestions above will be great to employ however especially since there is a small chance that on Monday you find out it will be 2-3 more days. The use of SeaChem Prime or Safe will be useful if you can't get a generator or motorized pumps.

I wish you luck.

 

[knobhill]

Update? Did everyone make it?

 

[BiologyTeacher]

UPDATE: When I double- checked the temperatures after writing my post, I realized that I was mistaken. The fish tanks were all sitting at 82-84. I dropped the temperature setting by 2 degrees on Thursday, to ease them down to a lower temperature. I got a total of four battery-operated air pumps, and moved the turtle pleco into the GloFish tank. I put 2 air pumps in that tank, since the fish are the most expensive, and one in each of the others. I wanted to get a car battery charger with AC adapter for each room for the heaters, but it was cost prohibitive at $75 per, so they have been chilling at room temperature. The fish were fine at 1:00 pm EST, with the pumps still running. The fish in the one pump tracks were all gathered around the air bubbles, much more clustered than usual and not being territorial at all, but not gasping. I did not switch out the batteries, bc everything was running well. I'm about to go over and check everything again now. I'll add about 2 cups of duck weed to everything, to try to deal with nitrates. I also will probably do a partial water change. Thanks so much!

 

[skjl47]

I'll add about 2 cups of duck weed to everything, to try to deal with nitrates. I also will probably do a partial water change. Thanks so much!

Hello; I read the first few posts days ago and felt I had nothing new to add so did not post. I just read the last post to see if the power outage is over. I skipped the intermediate posts so I hope I am not repeating anything.

I am assuming there are no lights during the power outage. If so then adding duckweed may be a bad idea. First it my take that live plants help remove nitrates while growing and so may not be able to take up nitrates without light.
Going back a few decades I seem to recall that live plants do some of their growth during the dark phase of a photoperiod. They utilize the sugars made during photosynthesis in the light phase. If I have missed something feel free to ignore this.

The other thing that I have dredged up from memory is that live plants will use son\me oxygen from the water during the dark phase. So if these two memories are accurate it might not help to add the duckweed.