Recovering from the ice storm

That's a shame you lost all your fish. What are you thinking of replacing them with?

I had endlers and bristlenose in the tank. Will be replaced with the same sometime in Jan. Want to make sure the tank is good and ready before putting in there.

Lost 400 endlers and 225 baby bristlenose.

Wow that is horrible. I wish you the best of luck with the new tank. I'm sure it'll be a success, as it sounds like you were doing things right the first time.

Hey susankat,

I went through the same thing (ice storm in KS), although WAY less fish. I however did lose both my breeding trios apistos in my 20L. 7 Days without power as well.

I wish you luck on setting your tank back up, I just got mine cleaned up a couple of days ago.

It's been a lot of work. First time I have ever had a loss like that in the 30 years of keeping and breeding fish. Did have a couple of good surprised though with the fish that I didn't loose. My flag fish spawned a couple of nights ago and my Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi female is holding. But the bad thing on this one, I don't have another stable tank to put the female in. Lost fish in 5 tanks so its hurting. But there will more times for her.

hey sorry about your lost my parents live out side of Tulsa OK heading to Sparey {i don't think i spell that right} i call him up for his birthday on the 20th and he said he just got his power on 10mins before i call

Sorry to hear of both your losses.
I've lived thru a few ice storms/outtages myself when I lived back east, but fortunately didnt have a tank set up on those occasions.

Good luck with the future set ups.

They are all cleaned and most are set back up already, but they will all have to go through cycling again. I need to clean and redo the other 2 tanks as I am sure that there is no bacteria in the filters so having to monitor them for spikes. So am waiting for the others to finish then I will move them to the new tanks.

Shouldn't take too long to colonize as all the plants should have some bacteria on them. Least that is what I am hoping.

What do you do when you have power out?
Do you have access to hot water?
A good method is to place blankets around the tank, and stick bottles of hot water in occasionally to get an okay water temperature.
Sorry for your loss.

Great suggestions tropicalfish, but when the powers out for the period of time these guys/gals had to endure you're pretty much SOL if you don't have a generator.
The hot water bottle thing works (assuming you have a gas hot water heater or stove to heat water) but the temp fluctuations take their toll over time. Then with a lack of any real aeration/filtration it's sadly only a matter of time.

I know the outtages I lived through made getting through a typical day a chore in itself. I can only imagine the added concerns of trying to keep multiple tanks stable.

I did do water changes with warm water, Had a generator for the first day, but when I ran out of gas I was unable to get more as the stations were closed due to no power. I had quilts on all the tanks but in the end with no way to heat the tanks when temps got to 34 and lower in the house at night there wasn't much you can do. I was doing 6 to 7 water changes a day and that was probably doing as much harm with no bacteria in the filters to keep the tanks stable.

susankat said:

I did do water changes with warm water, Had a generator for the first day, but when I ran out of gas I was unable to get more as the stations were closed due to no power. I had quilts on all the tanks but in the end with no way to heat the tanks when temps got to 34 and lower in the house at night there wasn't much you can do. I was doing 6 to 7 water changes a day and that was probably doing as much harm with no bacteria in the filters to keep the tanks stable.

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Wow that sucks to have a generator and still no power since you ran out of gas. Note to self... make sure to fill up all gas cans :icon_wink. If the gas tank in my bronco is full, I could siphon that and should last my generator for a whole week! lol. Its cost me about a hundred bucks to fill that sucker before, since its like 35 gallons.

I moved my Flags to the big tank today as 10 gal tank isn't big enough for 2 pairs. They started spawning again in the plants, so hopefully I will have a bunch of babies before too long.