Topic: What to do during power outage.

[Boven]

The rather nasty storm that rolled through last night knocked out electricity to over a million people in my area.  The power companies are saying it may take days for some people to get their power back.  Of course, this happened during record setting high temperatures, to boot.  Fortunately, the office where I work is near home and has power, so that's where I am, enjoying the air conditioning.

Aside from the obvious discomfort from no air conditioning or lights, it also means no power to the aquarium filters.  On the plus side, all the tanks had their cleanings and partial water changes this week.  I did find my last platy dead this morning before I left for the office.  I suspect that's just a coincidence, though.  He was pushing 4 years old.  I'm kind of concerned about the tanks getting too hot if the outage here lasts a long time.

I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to help keep my fish comfortable and safe until power is restored.  I'm open to any suggestions though. 

[ShieldWolf]

Wow that sucks. During the absence of all power only thing that comes to mind would be a generator or if you can find battery operated air pumps/filters. Or even a battery operated fan to stir the top of the water to help with the transfer of oxygen into the water.
Other then that the fish can survive quite some time without the aid of a filter. I would think more frequent water changes should help in the mean time
I hope you get power back soon. Good luck.

[ShieldWolf]

Forgot to address the heat issue. If you can't get a working fan then sealed bags of ice or frozen plastic bottles of water should help short term.

Also I believe as a general rule, fish will tend to eat more in response to an increase in their metabolism caused by the higher temps. Again water changes will help remove the increased waste in lieu of a non functioning filter.

Finally if you have plants I'm sorry I can't help you with that except to say I guess the high temps wouldn't be beneficial to them. Lol

[Boven]

I just realized that I've got a few UPS's for the computers and other electronics.  I shut them off shortly after the power failed last night to silence the annoying symphony of beeping from them.  I'm really not sure what kind of power draw the canister filters have, but all my tanks, except for the 8 gallon, also have an HoB filter as a backup.  I can't think those take too much power to run.  If it comes down to it, I can move a UPS to each tank and run the HoB's.

Checking the electric company's storm outage map (I'm fortunate that my electric coop is fairly awesome and tends to provide a lot of information -unlike Pepco and Dominion- the bigger utility companies here.) the estimated restoration time is 11pm tonight.  I'm hoping it'll be sooner than that.  I went over 5 days without electricity at my old place years n years ago and I don't particularly want to go through that again.

[Cholly]

This one area UGF's and sponges rule. Although I prefer powerheads for normal operation, airstones will provide enough lift/flow to keep a cycle alive and you can buy battery powered pumps almost anywhere in the US. If your LFS doesn't have them, bait shops and sporting goods stores do(and sometimes they're cheaper there anyway!)

Taking the hood off will aid evaporative cooling, although that's not a good alternative if you've got jumpers(like your oscar) It will also make the room more uncomfortable for you by raising the humidity. Be very careful with ice, most tropicals can handle temps up into the high 80's(Fahrenheit) for a fair amount of time, sudden changes are more dangerous, no more than three degrees per hour, two is preferable.

[wendyjo]

We lost power too, but only for about 20 hours.  Still, it got hotter than hell...o during that time in my house - up over 95 degrees.  I just did lots of water changes with cold water from the tap.  Well, I did eventually move my little betta tanks to my sisters house once her power was restored, but up till then and on the big tank it was just lots of water changes.  Not sure how long that would have worked, but it did fine in the short term.  I do have a batter back up air pump that runs an airstone and a spongefilter, but it's pretty old now and failed after about 15 minutes of running on battery (time to replace I guess).

As soon as the power came back on I cleaned all the filters to remove any dead bacteria and everyone seems fine.

[Boven]

I was rather fortunate in that the power was only out for about 13 hours.  The power company's original restoration estimate was 11pm Saturday night, which then became 9:49am Sunday, then Monday...then the outage was no longer listed.  A trip home and I found the air conditioning working to cool the place down again and the filters running.  For some reason, the HoB on the oscar tank was just humming.  Pulling the intake tube off, I found that the impeller was sticking up a bit for some reason.  I pushed it back down where it should be, plugged it back in and it started working properly.

I'm going to have to shop around for a battery powered air pump and sponge filter for future emergency use.  I'm very glad that I'm not among those who still haven't gotten their electricity back and that, with the exception of the platy, my fish all survived.

[ShieldWolf]

Glad to hear it all ended well with only a single fish loss.