How many hours or days can BB live without water?

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Death03

Death03

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Feb 1, 2014
296
17
33
Philippines
There's been power outage everyday here in our city for like 3-4 hrs a days and once there has been a 12 hour long power outage. My filter now is submerged so I don't have anything to worry about but I am planning to make an overhead wet/dry filter but I'm worried about the BB dying without constant water draining in the media.
 
None of these bacteria produce spores, so they will die under any drying condition. I'd estimate 2-3 hours survival at most. The good news is that at this point you still have some viable BB left in the wet portions of the tank and filter, so if you get things up and running soon, you should be able to recover.

Just be sure to feed the fish only a small amount and to check the parameters in the tank after your first feeding and make sure the ammonia and nitrite are zero. If so, slowly increase the feeding amounts over a week and the BB populations will recover.
 
Is it an internal filter?
With any power outage when water is not flowing through a filter, the best is to drain the filter, keep the media moist but in open air. This way it still has access to oxygen and stays alive.
Scientific papers say bacteria doesn't die easily but the longer it's been inactive, the longer it takes it to recover.
I'd invest in emergent plants as a backup filtration. As long as they have light and nutrients, they'll mop up the ammonia and your tank won't be filter reliant that much if at all depending on how many plants you get.
 
It will be an overhead filter wet/dry filter. So it's probably not a good decision to make one with my circumstances right?
 
Design your overhead filter with a shut-off valve to prevent the water from emptying out of the filter. So, when you lose power, shut the valve and manually fill filter so bio media stays submerged. Put a battery operated air pump to aerate inside the filter as well.
 
Death03 said:
It will be an overhead filter wet/dry filter. So it's probably not a good decision to make one with my circumstances right?
Click to expand...

Actually, it's probably the best approach as long as the power is not out long enough for the media to dry out completely. And you can manually wet it if needs be while the power is out.

Wet media that has access to aerial O2 can deal with massive amounts of nitrogenous waste because the only thing limiting filters is oxygen, hence why wet/dry filters are so much more efficient in dealing with ammonia/nitrites even with a way smaller volume of media.
Stop an external filter and it can completely de-oxygenates itself given enough time. You'll soon smell the sulphur if you open it afterwards because anaerobic bacteria takes over as the aerobic such as nitrifying bacteria simply can't function anymore. This doesn't happen in a trickle filter for example.
If you have an external filter and the power stops, you need to open it, empty it from water and just keep the media moist. The bacteria will then survive just perfectly.
I don't know why people suggest submering the media in water that doesn't get oxygen replenished during a power cut, It's the worst you can do for both the media and the fish as the bacteria in the media will keep draining oxygen from the water when the fish need it the most.

So I think a wet/dry filter is the best idea actually...
 
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