Query - Please Help

[MrsMcD]

We are new to the hobby, we bought a well established tank in December and during our maintenance today our tetra tec ex 700 hose unit appears to be broken which we will replace tomorrow. Will it be harmful to the fish to leave them without a filter for 24 hours?

Thanks

 

[markandhisfish]

ideally you dont want to be without filtration for that long . you will need to keep an eye on the stats ammonia/nitrite and keep them down with water changes

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum MrsMcD.
It is best not to leave the filter off that long, but what you can do is take the filter media out of the filter and set it in the tank where water can flow across it. It will help your filter bacteria survive by doing so. If you have an air stone, set the air stone under the media so that the air will move water across the media, that will help even more keep the filter alive.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with oldman47, don't worry about the mess it might make, it'll get cleaned up after you work this mature media into the filter box of the new filter and start it running, which is what you'll want to do. The existing bacteria in the filter media are a quite valuable thing to have.

You should also make quite sure the filter is really broken. If you are not familiar with priming a filter, it can appear broken when there are air bubbles trapped at the point of the impeller that moves the water.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

24 hrs withoput filtration on an established tank won't do too much harm to the filter bacteria. do a water change every few hours to remove toxic waste and add oxygen to the water by creating turbulence in the tank. when the filter is back working again test ammonia and nitrite every day to make sure you dont have a mini cycle but realistically although the filter bacteria start to die off after 12 hrs with no food source the rate of die off is fairly slow, only a couple of % every day.