My filter is fried!

[HarpyFishLover]

Hello again.

This is not exactly an emergency, as I have it mostly under control. But I'm losing my cycle. We had some pretty nasty storms this morning, and we had a few brown-outs. The very last one, nearly 3 hours ago, fried my filter. I panicked, but had an air pump which would work to keep it aerated. However, I forgot a crucial step. The filter has one bit of media-- its charcoal cartridge. Is it still ok for me to put it in the tank to keep the bacteria alive?

When I get a new filter, am I going to lose my cycle? I have no filter media other than the charcoal pad in my filter and am hoping that is enough.

Also, what filter would be best for a 10 gallon Marineland aquarium? (If you want, I'll find the link to this aquarium and post it here.)

Sorry, maybe this isn't an emergency. But I do hope that it doesn't turn into one.

 

[fluttermoth]

As long as you have the cartridge in the tank with some water movement, the bacteria will survive just fine for a few days.

Have you thought about running a sponge filter from your air pump? You could tie/ rubber band the cartridge to the sponge for a few weeks to let the bacteria colonise it.

 

[HarpyFishLover]

So it would seem my filter wasn't actually fried. A snail, or some other small thing, probably fell onto the impeller when the power went out, but when it came on a second later, the impeller stopped. Luckily, I have a really good LFS, and they cleaned it for free, and showed me how to, so that I didn't have to buy another filter. ...I did feel kind of bad not paying for it, so I bought a hang in tank ammonia test card and a fish.

Thank you for the answer, though... it saved my biowheel from drying out. (I forgot the biowheel was also filter media...)

 

[Toney]

Cool