Filter down for hours

[Sambo7475]

Hi all, long time absent. Hope everyone's been well. I have a big concern, and wonder if anyone has ideas...

Today we were spray painting some immovable furniture near my tank, I had my wife turn off the air pump and hob filters on my 75 gal cichlid tank. I was at work when the job was complete. She ran fans for a couple of hours and then turned the filters and air pump back on. I got home from work 9 hours after the filters were turned off to find the media mostly dry and the filters just buzzing. The ceramic rings were dry, the big sponge was only moist in my dual Aquaclear AC110's.

My concern is I may have lost most of my beneficial bacteria.

I'm due for a partial water change tomorrow. I was thinking of holding off for a few days to allow time to regen the BB colonies. Is there anything else I can do to prevent a mini/major cycle from occurring? I have several other tanks, but I'm not excited about moving media from tank to tank because I do have Malasian Trumpets in a couple of them.
Looking for suggestions and as always, Thank you in advance.
Sam

 

[Sambo7475]

by the way, I was able to prime the filters and they seem to be running fine.

 

[fishwonder]

Just to let you know, millions of tanks have power failures all over the world every day for hours, days, weeks. They power up and all are fine. As long as your media stays wet, your bacteria will be just fine.

 

[Sambo7475]

Thank you fishwonder for your reply. I did end up having a slight spike in nitrites at 3 days, did a few water changes, and a week later all is well. I did a 75% water change on Sunday 8/23, and today my parameters are completely back to normal.
I was very worried because the rings had completely dried, but apparently there was enough bb on the sponge/surfaces to compensate.

 

[gilpi]

I’ve had power outages for up to 3 days using canister filters. I won’t feed during that time though.

 

[Delapool]

Good to hear got through it with only a small nitrite spike.

All of mine have been media stays wet. Probably about the same - up to three days. At a week I found the sealer canister filter went anaerobic and wouldn’t do that again.