Re-cycle?

[LaloJ]

Hi, I just have a quick question, I had a power outage while at work, I found a large part of the ceramic rings on my HOB filter out of the water, luckily when I arrived everything was working, my wave generator and everything the main tank except the HOB filter, but the neighbors say that the power cut was about 3 hours in which the power would sometimes come back in 5-10 minutes and cut off again, so I don't worry about my main tank, the issue here is the ceramic rings on my QT without water since the start of the power outage, since there was no one at home to put water in the filter and it would start working, it is possible that the QT tank go to re-cycle?

 

[brandon429]

I predict that will not kill the bacteria on the rings, it’s not long enough for true desiccation.
as with all cycle assessments using digital vs non digital ammonia test kits matters much in the determination. Filter bac are always, always tougher than non digital kits give them credit for. I’m continually impressed at how tough filter bacteria are during all tuned seneye posts, for example. Their resiliency and toughness stands out.

 

[LaloJ]

Thanks Brandon, that's very good news. So, I would like to doubt, what would be the estimated time to kill the bacterial colony in the biological filters during a power outage?

 

[brandon429]

That has never been measured in reefing, even with the rough approach on non digital kits. We don’t have desiccation data to reference, we all guess based on close calls elsewhere.

power outages and external filters though have killed many systems, including all the fish once in my freshwater tank in the nineties, because in display running any filter is packed with detritus and millions of extra heterotrophs that do die from lack of oxygen and circulation. The resumed power pumps a mess of clearly smelly water back into the system and the bacterial decay compounds are notoriously poisonous


but let’s say someone took out the media, rinsed it in freshwater and put it all back clean before the power resumed…I’ll bet for sure the filter is not sterile and indeed will filter out ammonia and resume working. The media in any quarantine is clean like this, it’s not ridden with plant material and detritus from a sandbed etc


smell will guide you much much better than any non digital test kit. If yours smells ok it’s ok to use in the tank, give the media a quick rinse in clean saltwater if you like.

I have a YouTube video of my water change approach on my sixteen year old nano reef, and it’s drained to the sand and left in the air for 33 mins this last run. That’s rocks, corals in the air for half an hour routinely — that’s indirect desiccation data. If I had to guess, my corals will tolerate maybe an hour or so (in the bone dry air lol) and if I had to guess my live rock could go hours, that’s why I think your media will be ok. My system might go longer such as half a day but I can’t test to its limits because that would end the oldest pico reef it’s just tested to a moderate comfort level and the rest is a guess.

 

[LaloJ]

Well, that's a pretty comforting answer, I really had no idea of the biological material's ability to tolerate quite a long time under those conditions. Two weeks ago, Hurricane Grace became the worst hurricane that has hit my city, there are still areas without electricity, but I was lucky since it was reestablished in just two days, during this time I was moving the water manually from my quarantine tank and my main tank, I did it every 40 or 60 minutes, it was a difficult task, and perhaps unnecessary after reading your answer, but I did not want to take any risks.