Help power went out for a week / tank crash

[Cameron2324]

hello I ran into a problem last week we had power go out in our house and I lost all of my aquarium filtering and heating capabilities I ended up taking the fish to my LF S and they are currently being boarded there I just got power yesterday after going 8 days without and started the aquarium up however my ammonia and my nitrates have skyrocketed I'm at 2.0 ppm for ammonia and 160 or more for nitrates. I've started to recycle the tank using seed and I am wondering if there's anyway that I can speed up the process the tank was running for a year before I lost power the tank was at all zeros in my pH was at 8.3 I was able to keep a battery-operated circulation pump running so I did not lose my pH however the rest of my water quality has just gotten really bad with the die off of my live rock. Any help as to how to expedite this process to get my water safe for the fish to be re introduced would be appreciated! The fish are all doing well right now. once power didn't come back after the first night I took the tank off of the littler generator I had a moved them to my LFS the stock I have is a bubble tip anemone 2 chocolate clowns 3 chromis 1 burfish and 1 tonimi tang.
During the outage my house and tank got down to 41 degrees.


Thanks in advance

 

[Cameron2324]

Here is a pic of the tank currently i have the live rock just scattered at this point

 

[Cameron2324]

These are my amonia and nitrate tests

 

[bertoni]

I would dose some Amquel or Prime right away, and do some water changes. Keeping the lights on might help, particularly if there's some algae in the system.

 

[kenith]

Let it cycle again after a big water change. The bacteria should rebound fairly quickly

 

[Kurt03]

Great reason to keep prime on hand for emergencies! Dose prime, lots of flow to get air in the system. Running the lights is prob a good idea to. Maybe run them on extended schedule even. Big water changes, wet skim, carbon. Throw the kitchen sink at it!

 

[Kurt03]

Maybe some of the speed cycling bacteria would help, but I don't have any experience with them

 

[Cameron2324]

Thank you for all of the replies I've never been familiar. With prime what is it and does anyone have a link to where I could find it? The tank is a 67 gallon system between the tank and sump. I made 15 gallons of RO/DI water yesterday that I'm going to be doing the water change today. The amonia has almost reached zero the nitrates are coming down a lot but I'm still not in the safe zone at this point.


Thank you everyone again for the help.

 

[Breadman03]

http://www.marinedepot.com/Seachem_Laboratories_Prime_Tap_Water_Chlorine_Chloramine_Removers-Seachem-SC4435-FIADWTTCDC-vi.html

Your LFS likely carries Prime or a comparable product. Prime, from my understanding, neutralizes or binds ammonia so that the water doesn't harm the life in the tank.

 

[bertoni]

Prime binds to the ammonia, which prevents the ammonia from causing harm by preventing it from entering the cells.

 

[Cameron2324]

Thankyou I just ordered some I was thinking about trying to get the nitrates to go down and I've heard that by adding Sand to my San bed I would be able to reduce some of the Nitrates. I Thought that by adding more sand from carob see that would cause the tank to recycle does anybody know this to be true or would actually help I know I tried to go down by adding sand I have time at this point because my fish are not in the tank they are at my local fish store until I get the tank and the water squirt away.

 

[bertoni]

The sand might help a bit with denitrification, but probably not much. Most people seem to do well enough with no sand in the tank. How deep is the sand now? How coarse is it?

 

[Cameron2324]

Sand bed is relatively shallow right now maybe 2 inches deep here is a picture of the tank right now

 

[bertoni]

Adding more sand might help, but it's going to be a lot of work to do it properly. I'd add maybe ¼" at a time. The top layer of sand probably has a fair amount of detritus and animals, and burying that deeply might be a problem. Personally, I'd leave well enough alone. Unless you're willing to stock sandbed animals and keep the stocking compatible with them, 2" probably works as well as 4" or more.