Power failure help

Hey Guys.
I'm stuck in Bela Bela at the moment, and according to my armed response the power has been out at my house since 8:20 am this morning.
I have a 250l tank with a 60l sump.
I don't have a battery backup on my sump air pump, so the bacteria is either dead or dying.
How long does it take for the bacteria to die?
What should I do to try and save my fish?
My neighbor should be there to check on the power in the next hour, but what is the best thing to do right now?
Should she switch the power back on, I'm concerned about pumping all the dead bacteria in my sump, back into the tank.
How do I fix the situation from here? I assume the tank will cycle, so how often and how big should I water change ?
Should I add some of that " bacteria in a bottle"?
I have a product called sachem safe. On the back it has doses for ammonia spikes. should I be adding any of this stuff?
Please, any advice would be welcome right now!!
thanks
Varkie

 

@Varkie, the power here in Rustenburg was off for 22hours and I only did some water changes to keep my temp stable and to get some O2 in the water by disturbing the surface, power came back on, filters started working and didn't experienced any fish losses. Good idea is to get a battery operated air pump as quickly as possible for future. from my experience the bacteria doesn't die off that easily and quickly. Do you have any plants in your tank?

 

Hey @wsteene
I have some valis and allot of java moss. will these help?

 

@Varkie, I had a problem with power cuts last year, I think you should be fine for 6 to 8 hours, as long as the filter media the bacteria is housed in don't dry out.

What you can do is to get a 1500VA UPS from a PC shop and connect this to your air pump, this should give you about 3 hours.

 

@wsteene yeah good idea on those pumps man

small water change is your friend now and bela bela is very hot, so you really gota keep the temp down as there is no o2 in the water
and the high temp will drop it even further.

as for your bacteria, they can die off but also depending on what the water temp, if too high and lack 02 it might die off quick
no one will be able to tell you how long cos the situation is differant in each case.

hope you come right man - dont forget the water change

 

@Varkie, if it is getting natural day light to it, it will help as the photosynthesis process will carry on and will release some oxygen back into the water. If it is not getting any natural light with power failure the photosynthesis process will stop and CO2 will be released into your water as it is a natural process of plants then more frequent small water changes will be your solution in this point of time

 

Get yourself a bettery powered airpump. I use them works great

 

Hey guys. Thanks for all the info.
I'm back at home and everything seems alive
My plants grew like mad, and I have loads of extra snails in the tank now. Not sure if that's a good thing. I kinda like them, but I hear most people complain about snails.
I did a paper water test and the no3 was above 25 so I did a 40l water change, and will do another 40l tomorrow morning.
@Ryno: I did buy a "whale" battery air pump before I went on holiday, but it sounded like a pneumatic drill. All my fish freaked out when I turned it on and that was in the sump. I decided that the stress would probably kill some of the fish, and took the risk to not install it. I have an old UPS that I'll re-wire for my air pump in the future.

 

Glad everything is well and all your fish is alive. It will not be a bad idea to wire up the old UPS as quick as possible to prevent stress levels shooting sky high in such situations.