Wow good advice, especially since we live up here in the CO Rockies at 9,000 ft elevation. We haven't had an outage that lasted more than a few hours in the past 20 yrs that we've been here but there's always that chance and this video has given us the tools to cope if it happens! TY!
So glad you posted this. I live in Nebraska and this week we're experiencing very low temperatures and we're being told to expect blackouts. My concern is that I run two canister filters and I'm afraid of losing beneficial bacteria. Does bacteria die off take two to three days? Or should I be unplugging and running air pumps for the filter media soon after power outage?
If you're able to prepare for it in advance you can actually have some 5 gallon buckets and battery-powered air pumps on hand, when the power goes out you can just unplug the canister filter and move all of the media into the 5 gallon buckets and run an air stone And that should keep them going If you need to
I live in Northern California and because of wildfires we do experience long term power outages (3 days is probably about average) I do have a generator but it’s only run around 12-14 hours in those situations, do you think opening the top of the canister filters and running an air stone in them would help the bacteria at least overnight until the generator goes back on? Or would it be a waste of time
That would definitely work, As long as you're getting some kind of air to them So they don't suffocate, Even if you pulled the media and put it in a bucket with an air stone that would work too
I can only afford a 29 gallon tank (kit)at the moment, it comes with a non-adjustable heater and firstly i’m not sure if i should use the heater or not, and also i want to put oranda’s in the tank, how many small goldfish could i keep in it for about a year before upgrading to a 55
I would use the non adjustable heater since it comes with it for now until it stops working or you upgrade, no point in paying for something to not use it right? Second it's great that you have a plan to upgrade! However I would still only reccomend 1 goldfish in a 29 as they can very easily reach 6"+ in a year's time, not to mention if something happens to prevent you from upgrading when the time comes, the waste in the tank would be overwhelming to keep up on with water changes with more than 1 fish. For the 55 I would reccomend 3 full grown fancy goldfish.
I've suffered a power outage that lasted four days. I lost 90% of my fish. The bigger the fish, the less likely they are to survive beyond two days. Our only form of heating was electric. If your home has only electric invest in gas camping stove and a portable gas heater. The larger the tank the better the chances of surviving a power outage. Smaller tanks fair less well. Small fish survive much better than large fish. Cut down, or stop feeding your fish for the duration of the outage. Planted aquariums and healthy fish should easily survive several days without food. If they are less active they consume much less oxygen. Cover the tank with a blanket. For up to two days most fish can survive without heat and aeration. Obviously this depends on your fish load. But in perfectly still water, and in the dark two days is doable. If the power outage goes into day three, and you can boil water on a camping stove. Fill a hot water bottle and place it in the tank. Hand warmers I'm afraid just don't cut it. You should start to aerate the tank on day three. You can get battery powered air pumps that run off car batteries which will last for weeks. To recap. Blanket. Stop feeding. Hot water bottle. Air pump. If you don't have any other form of heating in the house, and your outage last longer than three days. Then best of luck. You'll need it.
Well put, though I have used hand warmers on smaller tanks 55 gal and under and they do work if that is what you have available, if your to the point of having larger tanks and are investing in larger gas heaters you might as well drop the extra money and get a generator since it will take a fairly large gas heater to heat up a tank, though the size of the tank and room size is relevant in the heater size needed.
Let's say you ran out of heat packs, in a pinch do you think one could you cycle between adding hot rocks you boiled with a gas stove? Or would the fish be likely to touch it and hurt themselves?
In theory you probably could though I don't know how long it would last because heat dissipation off of a rock going into cool water cools it pretty quickly
Hi! Well the impeller on my old canister filter decided to die this evening. I happened to have a brand new sponge filter on hand, so I hooked it up with an air stone. I took all of my bio media and just set them in the tank. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I don’t plan on going back to the canister. How long should I keep the bio load in the tank? Thanks. And I was so happy (finally) with how my tank looked. I don’t want to lose it all.
Should only have to keep in in there a week or 2 for it to transfer some bacteria over, though you'll only get a portion of it to convert over to the sponge filter, when you end up removing the other media from the canister the sponge will then grow more bacteria to fully support the bio load.
Thanks for the info. Have you actually done this or is it theoretical? Speaking mostly about the heat packs, how many do you think it would take to keep a 10, breeder or 55 from falling too quickly. I bought a UPS with USB plugs that I would use to run usb pumps (the cheap silent cylinder types) but I like your AA battery idea. More portable and AAs are basically infinite. I had given up on heating since it took too much power so thank you for the great ideas. I think if I just did the Mylar it would slow down the loss. Also, thanks for the ken’s food tip!
I have actually done it, but it all depends on how cold it is in the room versus the tank temperature and how quickly it will drop, I would normally use one or two heat packs on a 10 gallon and probably all six on a 55
Thank you, when the electricity came back on my black beta fish came back to life? He was literally not moving , not breathing, I even picked him up. A the heater came on and he shot back up, hopefully he makes it.
I know it isn't relevant to this video but I was curious to get your thoughts on something because I haven't seen it tried elsewhere I had an unused Fluval U4 lying around (like 265gph submersible filter, but it's filled with 2 strips of 15 ppi sponge and one inner strip of 40 ppi sponge), but because I want to use it in the 120 gallon in which I plan to add Shrimp I tried a modification. To avoid pulverizing any babies, I custom trimmed 1 inch thick 15ppi sponge, cut two tiny holes for the output, and basically wrapped it all the way around the filter. Basically it looks like a big black cylinder. Since the ppi isn't too dissimilar to a sponge filter, I thought it could be a good way to get some additional surface area for biological filtration while also creating some gentle flow. Aside from general thoughts, is there any reason this is a silly idea which explains why I haven't seen it done before? And since it's a 15 ppi sponge, should I not worry about it clogging much like a sponge filter, or should I still expect to have to clean it regularly since there's 200+ gph going through it? Thanks Travis!
So my thoughts are a 15 PPI sponge is definitely going to be a good preventative barrier to keep shrimp out of the impeller of that filter well also not restricting flow, It should essentially act as a giant pre-filter sponge on a normal hang on back with the setup that you have, And I'm very intrigued to know how this works out, because of the lower PPI I don't imagine you're going to have to clean it very much but It will increase your beneficial bacteria capabilities. Let me know how it works out!
@@TrafishAquatics Thanks for the reply/interest! I'll also be running the PennPlax Cascade 1500 that came with the tank and a 200gph HOB filter on top of it on what will at least initially be just shrimp so the bioload realistically may be too low to really have any idea if the extra filtration is doing much of anything, but I'll keep you posted on if I notice anything and if the shrimp seem to like it as much as they seem to usually like sponge filters. The goal was just to get as much filtration as possible basically because my hope is that the tank will be able to survive with maintenance only once every few weeks once I move back out for school
Being that shrimp are generally low bioload It should be able to get by for quite a while without maintenance, One thing to keep in mind though is any poop or debris that's collected by the filters is only removed from view and it's still physically in the system decomposing. So filters only physically remove the debris from sight, it'll still have the full effect on the aquarium as if it wasn't removed. Just food for thought.
@@TrafishAquatics Yea that's a good point-- you definitely don't just solve everything by simply throwing more filtration at it. I'm hoping that some of the other measures I'm taking will be able to attenuate the effects of the breakdown On top of it being a planted aquarium, I'm incorporating a combination of floating plants and Peace Lily / Pothos placed with roots in clear Dollar Store soap trays, which seems to have an effect on removing my nitrates in my other aquarium with them. My rationale being that, as I understand it, submerged plants only really use nitrate as a primary energy substrate during peak photosynthesis, but because they're not limited by CO2 availability, floating/emersed plants have more potential for growth and nitrate uptake than submerged plants as per Liebig's Law of The Minimum. I also have a slow-moving plenum made with several connected undergravel filters along the entire bottom, topped with Safe-T-Sorb layers and Flourite Red in the middle, with the only updraft coming from the passive rise of airstone bubbles in the short uplift tube. Hopefully I can facilitate an 0.5-2ppm O2 environment and create an anoxic zone within the substrate which will also remove nitrates
All of those methods should result in good forms of nitrate export, I use pothos in my tanks and it definitely helps because there's no limitation on CO2 with the plants that are grown outside of the aquarium.
This is gospel!!! I’m in Louisiana and was at ground zero for back to back Hurricanes. Most of this was a life saver.
That's great!
Thanks for the video! My electricity went out after a storm and I needed this
Wow good advice, especially since we live up here in the CO Rockies at 9,000 ft elevation. We haven't had an outage that lasted more than a few hours in the past 20 yrs that we've been here but there's always that chance and this video has given us the tools to cope if it happens! TY!
Your welcome
So glad you posted this. I live in Nebraska and this week we're experiencing very low temperatures and we're being told to expect blackouts. My concern is that I run two canister filters and I'm afraid of losing beneficial bacteria. Does bacteria die off take two to three days? Or should I be unplugging and running air pumps for the filter media soon after power outage?
If you're able to prepare for it in advance you can actually have some 5 gallon buckets and battery-powered air pumps on hand, when the power goes out you can just unplug the canister filter and move all of the media into the 5 gallon buckets and run an air stone And that should keep them going If you need to
I use a computer battery back up and a marine battery and if needed a generator if I must
Those are great options too
good vid but turn up your mic brother ....thanks for info
Thanks for the tip will do!
I live in Northern California and because of wildfires we do experience long term power outages (3 days is probably about average) I do have a generator but it’s only run around 12-14 hours in those situations, do you think opening the top of the canister filters and running an air stone in them would help the bacteria at least overnight until the generator goes back on? Or would it be a waste of time
That would definitely work, As long as you're getting some kind of air to them So they don't suffocate, Even if you pulled the media and put it in a bucket with an air stone that would work too
I can only afford a 29 gallon tank (kit)at the moment, it comes with a non-adjustable heater and firstly i’m not sure if i should use the heater or not, and also i want to put oranda’s in the tank, how many small goldfish could i keep in it for about a year before upgrading to a 55
I would use the non adjustable heater since it comes with it for now until it stops working or you upgrade, no point in paying for something to not use it right? Second it's great that you have a plan to upgrade! However I would still only reccomend 1 goldfish in a 29 as they can very easily reach 6"+ in a year's time, not to mention if something happens to prevent you from upgrading when the time comes, the waste in the tank would be overwhelming to keep up on with water changes with more than 1 fish. For the 55 I would reccomend 3 full grown fancy goldfish.
I wonder how much heat you generate from those battery air pumps.
From the one I have it's hardly anything at all
I've suffered a power outage that lasted four days. I lost 90% of my fish. The bigger the fish, the less likely they are to survive beyond two days. Our only form of heating was electric. If your home has only electric invest in gas camping stove and a portable gas heater. The larger the tank the better the chances of surviving a power outage. Smaller tanks fair less well. Small fish survive much better than large fish. Cut down, or stop feeding your fish for the duration of the outage. Planted aquariums and healthy fish should easily survive several days without food. If they are less active they consume much less oxygen. Cover the tank with a blanket. For up to two days most fish can survive without heat and aeration. Obviously this depends on your fish load. But in perfectly still water, and in the dark two days is doable. If the power outage goes into day three, and you can boil water on a camping stove. Fill a hot water bottle and place it in the tank. Hand warmers I'm afraid just don't cut it. You should start to aerate the tank on day three. You can get battery powered air pumps that run off car batteries which will last for weeks. To recap. Blanket. Stop feeding. Hot water bottle. Air pump. If you don't have any other form of heating in the house, and your outage last longer than three days. Then best of luck. You'll need it.
Well put, though I have used hand warmers on smaller tanks 55 gal and under and they do work if that is what you have available, if your to the point of having larger tanks and are investing in larger gas heaters you might as well drop the extra money and get a generator since it will take a fairly large gas heater to heat up a tank, though the size of the tank and room size is relevant in the heater size needed.
@@TrafishAquatics Lol. I Should have pointed out. The gas heater was for me not the fish.
Ah ok, I thought you were referencing using the gas heater to heat the room the tank is in to regulate the temperature of the tank.
Let's say you ran out of heat packs, in a pinch do you think one could you cycle between adding hot rocks you boiled with a gas stove? Or would the fish be likely to touch it and hurt themselves?
In theory you probably could though I don't know how long it would last because heat dissipation off of a rock going into cool water cools it pretty quickly
@@TrafishAquatics Yea that's what I figured, hopefully it never gets to that point
Thank you!
I agree, Power outages are never fun
Hi! Well the impeller on my old canister filter decided to die this evening. I happened to have a brand new sponge filter on hand, so I hooked it up with an air stone. I took all of my bio media and just set them in the tank. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I don’t plan on going back to the canister. How long should I keep the bio load in the tank? Thanks. And I was so happy (finally) with how my tank looked. I don’t want to lose it all.
Did I do the right thing? How long should they stay there? 2 weeks?
Should only have to keep in in there a week or 2 for it to transfer some bacteria over, though you'll only get a portion of it to convert over to the sponge filter, when you end up removing the other media from the canister the sponge will then grow more bacteria to fully support the bio load.
excellent information!!! tank you!!!!!
Your welcome!
Thanks for the info. Have you actually done this or is it theoretical? Speaking mostly about the heat packs, how many do you think it would take to keep a 10, breeder or 55 from falling too quickly.
I bought a UPS with USB plugs that I would use to run usb pumps (the cheap silent cylinder types) but I like your AA battery idea. More portable and AAs are basically infinite. I had given up on heating since it took too much power so thank you for the great ideas. I think if I just did the Mylar it would slow down the loss.
Also, thanks for the ken’s food tip!
I have actually done it, but it all depends on how cold it is in the room versus the tank temperature and how quickly it will drop, I would normally use one or two heat packs on a 10 gallon and probably all six on a 55
Great information as usual.Thank you😊👍🐡
Thanks Jon!
My lights just turned off for 24 hours I walked in fish room and my betas are dying and some are dead we were all freezing
Sorry to hear that
Thank you, when the electricity came back on my black beta fish came back to life? He was literally not moving , not breathing, I even picked him up. A the heater came on and he shot back up, hopefully he makes it.
fish can survive alot of different weather fluctuations in the wild, so there is hope. just keep an eye on him.
I know it isn't relevant to this video but I was curious to get your thoughts on something because I haven't seen it tried elsewhere
I had an unused Fluval U4 lying around (like 265gph submersible filter, but it's filled with 2 strips of 15 ppi sponge and one inner strip of 40 ppi sponge), but because I want to use it in the 120 gallon in which I plan to add Shrimp I tried a modification. To avoid pulverizing any babies, I custom trimmed 1 inch thick 15ppi sponge, cut two tiny holes for the output, and basically wrapped it all the way around the filter. Basically it looks like a big black cylinder. Since the ppi isn't too dissimilar to a sponge filter, I thought it could be a good way to get some additional surface area for biological filtration while also creating some gentle flow.
Aside from general thoughts, is there any reason this is a silly idea which explains why I haven't seen it done before?
And since it's a 15 ppi sponge, should I not worry about it clogging much like a sponge filter, or should I still expect to have to clean it regularly since there's 200+ gph going through it?
Thanks Travis!
So my thoughts are a 15 PPI sponge is definitely going to be a good preventative barrier to keep shrimp out of the impeller of that filter well also not restricting flow, It should essentially act as a giant pre-filter sponge on a normal hang on back with the setup that you have, And I'm very intrigued to know how this works out, because of the lower PPI I don't imagine you're going to have to clean it very much but It will increase your beneficial bacteria capabilities. Let me know how it works out!
@@TrafishAquatics Thanks for the reply/interest!
I'll also be running the PennPlax Cascade 1500 that came with the tank and a 200gph HOB filter on top of it on what will at least initially be just shrimp so the bioload realistically may be too low to really have any idea if the extra filtration is doing much of anything, but I'll keep you posted on if I notice anything and if the shrimp seem to like it as much as they seem to usually like sponge filters.
The goal was just to get as much filtration as possible basically because my hope is that the tank will be able to survive with maintenance only once every few weeks once I move back out for school
Being that shrimp are generally low bioload It should be able to get by for quite a while without maintenance, One thing to keep in mind though is any poop or debris that's collected by the filters is only removed from view and it's still physically in the system decomposing. So filters only physically remove the debris from sight, it'll still have the full effect on the aquarium as if it wasn't removed. Just food for thought.
@@TrafishAquatics Yea that's a good point-- you definitely don't just solve everything by simply throwing more filtration at it. I'm hoping that some of the other measures I'm taking will be able to attenuate the effects of the breakdown
On top of it being a planted aquarium, I'm incorporating a combination of floating plants and Peace Lily / Pothos placed with roots in clear Dollar Store soap trays, which seems to have an effect on removing my nitrates in my other aquarium with them. My rationale being that, as I understand it, submerged plants only really use nitrate as a primary energy substrate during peak photosynthesis, but because they're not limited by CO2 availability, floating/emersed plants have more potential for growth and nitrate uptake than submerged plants as per Liebig's Law of The Minimum.
I also have a slow-moving plenum made with several connected undergravel filters along the entire bottom, topped with Safe-T-Sorb layers and Flourite Red in the middle, with the only updraft coming from the passive rise of airstone bubbles in the short uplift tube. Hopefully I can facilitate an 0.5-2ppm O2 environment and create an anoxic zone within the substrate which will also remove nitrates
All of those methods should result in good forms of nitrate export, I use pothos in my tanks and it definitely helps because there's no limitation on CO2 with the plants that are grown outside of the aquarium.