Hurricane Irma?

[MrDuckBootz]

As u prolly know Hurricane Irma might slam right into Florida and if it does I'm sure power will go out, what should I do about my filters and how will I be able to get oxygen into the water for my Dovii RQ pair and there babies in the 220? And also in the 20 upstairs full of more of there babies?

 

[wfex4]

Battery powered air pump. Try a local fish store or anywhere that sells fishing supplies.

If you have a canister and the power goes out for more than a couple hours, you may have to clean it out before plugging it back in as anaerobic bacteria could build up.

 

[neutrino]

Agree on the battery air pump. Don't know about your area but PetSmart has them in my area. I'd move fast before they sell out or order online.

I've been through a lot of outages, longest was 10 days after the derecho a few years ago. One factor is stocking density. As far as filters and media, a lot depends on ambient temperature... Copied (from another forum) is an excerpt of my account, this regarding my canisters during the outage:
Mine are Eheim classics. In cooler weather, media inside a canister will live longer than some may think (no problem for a couple of days ime), due to dissolved oxygen in the water in the canister and osmotic pressure inside the filters making this oxygen accessible to beneficial bacteria. Different ballgame in hot weather where they can go bad more quickly.

My Eheims have the inline water valves on the intake hose right down at the filter. So you shut off the valve and you shut off any siphon action from the topen the valves back up and you get a gravity feed that fills the canister with water, as long as your tank water level stays high enough. So, I removed top/pump section of the Eheims (and left them off) and at least twice a day emptied water out of the canister into a bucket (valve on intake hose closed), then open the valve to gravity feed water back into the canister to cover all media. This kept media alive and well, and prevented filters from going sour (bad smell). In fact, after a few of what amounted to media rinses, water poured out from the canisters looked very clean and smelled very fresh, better than the tanks themselves smelled, the beneficial bacteria getting time to quite thoroughly clean the water in the canister.

There's a lot of misinformation about beneficial bacteria, a lot of forum posts based on supposition, or misinterpretation of experience, there are also articles based on assumptions recent research has shown to be incorrect; they're more resilient than people think. Here's an article: http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/blog/articles/think-you-know-filter-bacteria-dream-on?rq=nitrifying bacteria

Another option is to take filter media out and put it directly in the tank, situate it in such a way that the battery air pump creates some water flow through or adjacent to it and you can even continue to get some filter activity from the deal.

I've seen people say their filters emptied the tank during an outage; if so, something was wrong, filter design, leaky seals, something. I've never had it happen and I've been through many outages.

 

[neutrino]

...One more thing. Something I learned some years ago is that one of the factors in oxygen content is surface area to volume. In other words, in the absence of enough mechanical aeration, lowering your water levels a bit improves the ratio of surface area to volume and can improve oxygen levels in the remaining water volume. I don't if there's a point at which the trade-off with less water volume becomes negative for the fish, but it's also something I've done successfully.

 

[MrDuckBootz]

Yea I have 2 canisters runnin in the 220 and a HOB filter for upstairs. For the airpumps does it matter size or is it one size fits all type of thing?

 

[kno4te]

My area of central Florida is gonna be affected and I got a few battery powered pumps ready to go.

Stay safe to all the Floridians fish keepers!

 

[wfex4]

Yea I have 2 canisters runnin in the 220 and a HOB filter for upstairs. For the airpumps does it matter size or is it one size fits all type of thing?

You can probably get by with one on the 20 but you'll need more than one on the 220 tank. Can't really provide more info that that. If buying online, read the reviews to get an idea on pump strength and how many you will need.

 

[Wailua Boy]

My area of central Florida is gonna be affected and I got a few battery powered pumps ready to go.

Stay safe to all the Floridians fish keepers!

Hoping for minimal impact for you guys. Now all you can do is watch the fury of mother nature. Imagine the people on the keys receiving first impact. yikes. God bless.

Ive been thru 2 hurricanes and that was enough.

Out of curiosity, what is your weather looking like?

 

[Drstrangelove]

I've lost power before. In Maryland, I had 2 tanks (75 & 55) that had zero power for 3 days due to a faulty transformer that exploded. (Not weather related.) I didn't do a thing and everything was fine.....

However, if a storm like that hits, power is likely to be out for more than 3 days. In Illinois, an ice storm (sleet and rain that froze on trees and power lines) took out most of my house for a week. Ironically, my bedroom and parts of my basement (where the fish were) had power, but everything else was gone.

Irma, of course, might be much more severe. So, yea, plan for a long haul just in case. Battery power helps, while you can also manually swish water throughout the filters and tank many times each day.

 

[Oompa Loompa]

Best of luck to anyone in Florida that has to put up with this beast of a storm.

I'm in southeastern North Carolina - hopefully we don't have anything serious happen here with the storm. It's nerve-racking, because this storm has been relatively unpredictable so far.

Drew