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