power out water change

[chocochipper]

Well I got home this morning to find the neighbors tree had taken down the power lines and totaled the wifes car. I have a battery backup on the tank and that lasted about 1.5 - 2 hours running 1 filter and the power heads. After that ran out I put my battery operated gravel vac in the tank to get some kind of circulation going. Finally got power about 8 hours after the whole ordeal started. I didn't feed the fish without the filters and I have no live rock yet for extra filtration. When it all started back up I had an excessive amount of foam on the top of the water so I figured I'd need to do a water change (I've noticed that everytime I need to do one that that happens). It has only been two days since my last water change, but I did it anyway just to be safe. Was it the safe thing to do? Or should I not have done it? I hope the poor little guys didn't get too stressed out.

 

[pufferlover]

Of course you were right to do that- it was the best thing for you to do. Now watch your readings for the next few days and if any raise in ammonia or nitrites do some more water changes till it settles down. Also, hope you changed filter medium (if not do so) as after about 6 hours any good bacteria in that filter will start to die off. Have gone thru a 9 hour outage once and never want to do that again. I have added back up power packs to all my tanks since then with a supposed running time of 5 to 6 hours each (never had to find out if they work that long since I put them on).