Sadness and Frustration

[Proud2B]

I'm affraid i have suffered a MAJOR setback today as a result of Hurricane Isabel and the subsequent damage to the power lines in my area. I had purchased a battery powered pump and airpump to keep things alive in the event of a power loss durring the hurricane but i had not thought of everything While i was at work today the local power company shot off my power briefly to fix some downed lines in my area. I was not to worried about that till i came home and noticed that the temp in my nano was a frightening 88 degrees. The A/C is on a digital thermostat that did not have a battery backup. so when the power came back on the A/C did not and the lights on the nano overheated it When i checked my water parameters tonight the nitrites and nitrates were totally off the scale I'm doing a total water change and hoping that it won't be tooo bad but i'm afraid i'm going to see alot of LR dieoff and most of the pods as well. any info or ideas what i should expect to see over the next few weeks, or should i just throw everything out and start over?

[Rick O]

88 isn't good but it shouldn't be the end of the world. You probably didn't lose as much as you think. I would stay the course and keep doing what you're doing with partial water changes until the nitrites drop to zero.

For future reference you can get a temperature controller that would turn a fan on in the event your water temp climbed too high. Place the fan where it blows across the lights and the surface of the water.

Good luck and let us know what happens.

[mnreefgeek]

I hit that a couple of times this summer, due to nmo AC. I didn't loose anything, but I had some unhappy critters for a while.

[ckreef]

I think Rick's advice is good. Just stay the course and see what happens.

Do not make any drastic decision just yet. Small well thought out decisions usually work better than the seat of your pants type of decision.

Also Pods and basic LR can withstand much more torture than a day at 88 degrees. There might be some die-off but it shouldn't be a total die-off.

[chetm2]

I also had my 5.5 aga overheat and I lost a bunch of shrooms and a couple of snails as well as a hermit and some feather dusters. No bueno. I think I'm gonna have to drill a bunch of small holes on the top of my custom oak hood (not really happy about that) Does anyone know how big the holes have to be? the back of the canopy is open but I did'nt have a fan hooked up. I do now. What is the ideal temp for nanos? I can't see keeping it below 80.

[ckreef]

I keep mine set at 80 - 81. It's just much easier to keep a slightly higher temp stable then to attempt a 78.

You shouldn't have to drill holes in the top of your canopy. If you have an open back and a fan blowing in that should be plenty. Assuming of course the fan is rated for decent flow and your not cooking your Nano w/ halides.

My canopy sections (over Minibow 7) has an open bottom and an open back. I have one fan rated at 21 cfm blowing in from the side and I usually don't even have to have the fan on --- open bottom and back works without the fan.

[Proud2B]

Well everyone as advised i have done regular 10% water changes and waited it out to see what would happen. Small cycling then everything seems fine. i have new growth on the LR which really suprised me so far everything is going great with parameters where they should be i think it is going to survive the overheeating just fine

[ckreef]

Proud2B -- glad to hear everything is going well.