On no! 6hr power outage today. What to do?

[amy]

I just found out that I will lose all power to my house between 9am and 3pm. What can I do for my fish and corals? I have a small generator that will allow me to run a very small fan and a air bubbled for maybe 2 hrs. I know this isn't enough.
A few months back I learned a hard lesson turning my tank off to feed my corals. I left it off all night and woke up to 11 fish dead. The timewas approx 6 hrs. This outage is for 6 hours. What can I do??

[gobytron]

the 2 basic things you really need to worry about are heat and water movement.

If you can run a heater and a small powerhead (like a koralia), you'll be fine.

even a small generator should be okay running these...

[mike31154]

Leaving everything off for 6 hours is not the same as having some basic things like a few air pumps going to oxygenate the water. What size is your system, generator & what's your current stocking level look like? I have two Pennplax battery operated air pumps on my system permanently in case there's an outage when I'm not around. They will cut in automatically through a small sensing relay in each one. If you're home during the outage there are a number of things you can do to minimize the impact. Remove some water, heat it on a gas stove or bbq if you don't have a gas stove & dump the water back in to keep the temperature up. The splashing will also help oxygenate somewhat. A car battery on a 1000 watt inverter can keep a skimmer or small powerhead going for quite a while as well.

[gobytron]

IMO
You dont need to go to those lengths as long as you have a generator and know that the power outage is coming.

salt settles when uncirculated, so it's not that your water loses so mch oxygen, it's that the salt settles on the bottom, killing the oxygen there and leaving a very oxygenated, low salinity layer on top.

My house loses power a few times a year at least and all I do is run a heater on each of my tanks and a Koralia 1 in each off of a small, 150$ generator.

Have never lost a fish on power outages, longest was almost 30 hours winter before last.

Go ahead and run back and forth from the barbecue, but its unneccesary if you have a small generator.

[amy]

Current stock is a regal tang, melanurus wrasse, scopa tang, mandarin goby, niger trigger, lawnmower blenny,2 clowns and a nem plus the corals.

[fencer]

CDN tire back up battery

[GMGQ]

Necessities in order of importance (IMO):

1. Heater
2. Air pump
3. Small powerhead

[lastlight]

Perhaps not the most efficient way but if I have that issue I will run an extension cord out to my truck and run it off of that.

[DisneyCoralReef]

You make a good point! we get a lot of outages, usually don't last to long, but we do get them. I had never thought of that or what I would do if we got one. Going to have to inquire about that to some fellow fishers.

[sphelps]

An air pump alone will be enough to keep everything happy for 6 hours. Unless the tank is pretty small heat loss shouldn't be an issue either. Not sure what the fan would be for but I wouldn't use it, a second air pump would be more effective.

Is the power outage in effect now? Is so I'm guessing any advice at this point is fairly useless unless you have access through a smart phone or something. :neutral:

[amy]

Power outage is over and only lasted a few hours. Thanks for all the advice. My back up battery pack was enough to keep the pump running. The tank dropped almost 2 degrees, but everyone seems to be doing well.
I will make sure to prepare for this in the future.

[Samw]

Glad to hear all is well.
+1 on air pump
+1 on battery operated air pump that comes on automatically when the power goes out.

[ALang]

Amy. I've got a few of these battery powered air pump that willl go on when power is out. PM me if you are interested. Lenny.

[patd]

I experience plenty of power outages and have never done anything to try and keep powerheads, heater or oxygenation going in my tanks.
It's not so bad since we were moved to a different power grid but we used to have at least 2-3 power outages a month and many have lasted longer than 12 hours
For what its worth - I have never lost anything in either of my tanks due to the outages.