54 hours without power = 100% fish mortality

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Doug,

Come on over when your tank recovers & I'll have some frags for you to help you get started. I have about 10+ of those bright green zoos of yours so I can frag you a few of those too. Got some candycane/trumpet & we'll see what else. This sucks man but pm me when your tank is cleaned up & ready to start up again.

Anthony

[Diana]

We are very sorry to hear that! We were able to save one of our friends tanks and fish just down the road from us. She was like you without power for 50 hours. Wish we would have known you were so close and had problems, maybe we could have helped?

[Chad]

Its really sad it hear about loses..

I am really surprised people are still unprepared. We have been discussing this for a good three weeks. Everyone really should have atleast a battery powered airstone. Cheap and easy and could very well save your tank. I suggest to anyone who reads this that does not have any sort of backup when power goes out to go and get the battery operated airstone. It will save you a huge headache.

[Diana]

(that was posting Raf above)

This is terrible... are you in deep cove? If we had known you could have brought your fish at least over here, we had a generator and then the power went back on saturday morning. Alas its no use to wallow in "what could have been".

We have TONS of frags on the bottom of my 33 reef so when your tank gets going again you can have some nice zoos and mushies.



-Diana + Raf

[Scavenger]

I always hate to hear of losses like this. I know the feeling of mass losses. Mine was a decease outbreak which cost me all but 2 fish. And it was my negligence of not using QT that caused it. It seems to hurt more when it's your fault in my opinion.

Anyway, I've gone through a few power outages now without losses caused by it. I thought I'd post my extremely budget power outage kit for those also on a budget. This does however require your babysitting the tank for the period without power. I'm fortunate that I work from home and can be in attendance the whole time.

What I do, is once power is out, wrap the tank in blankets. I then set up the propane camp stove in a vented area and when tank temp goes down, start to heat up about 1 gallon at a time. (but not too hot). As I heat water I also break out the extremely high tech plastic soup ladle and start stirring the tank. For aeration, I pour the heated water from a few feet off the surface and don't worry about spills and splashes. I do this every 15 min to 1/2 hour when I'm awake. If sleeping, I set an alarm to wake me up every 2 hours to go stir and heat water.

If it is a long period without power, I set up a mirror to reflect light from the window into the tank, as it's usually winter and I'm warming the tank, any extra heat is a bonus.

Hope this might give some budget reefers an idea or 2. Best of luck to all during these dang nab winter storms.

[Chad]

Wow, thats is pretty budget wise lol.. but seriously, the battery operated air stone costs next to nothing compared to our tanks.

http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...uct_ID=ap-hbat

or

http://oceanaquatics.com/store/produ...tery-Air-Pump/

If nothing else, get this PLEASE!! to all people who have no backup plan! Get this!

Save your tank and your sanity

[Diana]

we had one of these for each tank, got them at PetCetera although they cost $23 each there

[pinhead]

I don't have the huge investement that other people have in their tanks so having a portable generator is probably not the route I would go. The longest we have ever previously gone without power was 3 hours when lightning hit the transformer on the telephone pole. So hopefully this is a very unusual occurance. I'll just accept the fact that this happens sometimes and I was unlucky.

Updated livestock list now that the tank has stabilized after a few days and the skimmer has pulled out a lot of gunk.

-yellow clown goby reappeared as the only fish in the tank
- RBTA actually looks happy with lots of bubbles - although it has relocated itself to a bad spot on the tank
- all finger leathers dead
- all GSP dead
- all anthelia and xenia dead
- all hairy mushrooms dead but smooth mushrooms survived
- all pink and watermelon zoos dead but a few other varieties like boy scouts survived
- Pipe Organ looks pretty sick as does Montipora and gorgonian
- all green ricordia and palythoa survived.
- all LPS survived
- 1 snail survived

So I'm actually pretty surprised at the hardiness of the LPS and the Anenome.

The tank looks pretty bare but it could have been worse.

Thanks for the offer Anthony.