Hurricane survival in relation to bare bottom tanks

[markster33139]

Well I just went through Hurricane Irma like a lot of other folks in South Florida. I had no electricity for 4 days but at the end of it my tank seemed to have done ok with no losses unlike a lot of other folks unfortunately. Some details about my tank: It is 125 gallon bare bottom, but has a few large sized pieces of live rock (5 to be exact). I had recently removed all the fish and it currently is mainly filled with leathers and other soft corals - no sps. I have a Gyre 250 with a back up battery that probably lasted around 30 hours or so before it died out. My question is this: does the lack of sand help or hurt in situations like this with extended power outages, my thinking is that the lack of a sandbed to foul up and become toxic may have actually helped. I would appreciate any thoughts on this as I am about to set up another aquarium in a few weeks.

 

[cgdcinc]

It seems it would help to be bare bottom in theory. But I can't say if it would as a fact. Interested to find out now!

 

[Orcus Varuna]

Well I just went through Hurricane Irma like a lot of other folks in South Florida. I had no electricity for 4 days but at the end of it my tank seemed to have done ok with no losses unlike a lot of other folks unfortunately. Some details about my tank: It is 125 gallon bare bottom, but has a few large sized pieces of live rock (5 to be exact). I had recently removed all the fish and it currently is mainly filled with leathers and other soft corals - no sps. I have a Gyre 250 with a back up battery that probably lasted around 30 hours or so before it died out. My question is this: does the lack of sand help or hurt in situations like this with extended power outages, my thinking is that the lack of a sandbed to foul up and become toxic may have actually helped. I would appreciate any thoughts on this as I am about to set up another aquarium in a few weeks.

I would agree it helps but what fouls up the water more then anything is oxygen depletion and resulting death of all oxygen respiring critters. IMO no fish saved you more then the bare bottom. I fared way better in central fla during irma, lost power for about 12 hrs total... But having lost a tank during tropical storm debbie (without power for almost 5 days) I feel yalls pain. My single best piece of advice is to buy some pennplaxx battery operated air pumps. They are cheap ($10ish),run on d batteries, work for about 48hrs on each set of batteries, and do a fine job agitating the water surface. The only critters I salvaged I kept alive in a trash can with some live rock and one of those air pumps. Happy Reefing everyone down that way, don't give up and start over again even if you lost everything!