Disaster on Tuesday night...

[King Nikon]

This is going to be long, but it has a happy ending.

So, on Tuesday I checked my peacock to see if it was getting ready to molt... nope so I did a water change that afternoon on my 30 gallon tank (5 gallons) and checked parameters, everything was normal.

Then... my power goes out on Tuesday at like 11 pm... thankfully I was ready for something like this because of a scheduled outage a few months ago. I had a battery operated air pump for my reef tank to keep it oxygenated so I put that in the reef tank.

Then on my mantis tank I used my computers UPS to run another air pump I had. Had those hooked up no problem before and they lasted a long time. After that I called a friend to find me the phone number for the electric company.

So since the power went out completely, the moonlights turned off and its nearly pitch black outside and there was 0 flow in the tank (besides some bubbles from air stone), my peacock was FLIPPING OUT, swimming all around the tank, smashing into things, breaking the surface of the water and running around the perimeter of the tank like a maniac. I was terrified because my old mantis shrimp did this then died a day later. This peacock never swam up to surface then fell down though, it was always swimming or climbing around so I knew it was most likely OK but I was still freaking terrified.

But anyway, after I called the electric company they told me no estimate on the time frame to get power back.. no surprises there, and an hour passes with the mantis still swimming around. I even put a LED flashlight over my tank for some light to see if it would calm down. It didn't.

Then after that hour passes my UPS started beeping like crazy... the battery was about to die and then the air pump turns off. Great now my tank has no oxygen, the mantis shrimp is flipping out and I needed to get up for school in the morning. So after about 45 minutes of no air stone the power goes on, I think thank god and start putting things away to go to sleep.

Then the power goes out AGAIN 5 minutes later and I'm like ***, so I go and grab the batter pump for my reef tank to set it up and the power comes back on a few minutes later... This time I waited like 15 minutes and it seemed to be on for good now so I went back to sleep with the mantis shrimp swimming around like a maniac knowing there's absolutely nothing I can do about it... but at least the moonlights, pump and powerhead were back on.

I know there was no oxygen problem in the tank, the cardinal I have in there was fine and didn't care at all and the tank has a very low bioload (peacock, cardinal, longspine urchin, and a few corals) I probably could have left the whole tank with 0 flow and no airstone all night no problem, but I was scared because I did the water change the same day the power went out and the mantis shrimp was flipping out.

But anyway, the next morning for school I went and looked at the tank, the mantis shrimp was sitting in the burrow (albeit hard to see though), I wasn't really sure if it was alive or not but I had to leave for school. Came back around noon and saw the mantis shrimp walking around.. thank god is all I could think. So now it's Thursday I saw it digging around and walking around like normal.

The only reason why I can think as to why it was flipping out so bad was maybe it thought a natural disaster was going to happen like a hurricane passing through... a large influx of new water, pitch black from no light, and then a sudden pull of water to a dead stop from a tidal surge.

But the moral of the story? Buy a dedicated UPS for just your moonlights and 1 powerhead.

 

[Kharn]

interesting story "King_Nikon"

Glad nothing went all that bad for you =) hope you still got the rest and sleep you needed for school...

from the studies I have done through extensive reading I came to the conclusion that although the stomatopod is a marine creature requiring a marine aquarium, there hardiness is somewhat extreme, I'd think that IF for whatever reason your stomatopod died then anything else and everythine else would of died before it, just because of there hardiness, there use to being bashed around in live rock in pet stores and being dumped in fresh water / left out in the oxygen.

In short, there a survivor!

 

[King Nikon]

They are very hardy.

But during a molt cycle is a different story. I was afraid it was going to panic molt at a bad time.

 

[StephLionfish]

Glad everybody's alright... It's scary when the power goes out, just cause the tanks are so fragile...I wonder why he was going so crazy?
The power has gone out many times this year, due to weather. We had the power for a week in August ( that was torturous) ... We couldn't find a generator ( cause everyone else had already bought them all), so I was literally stirring my tanks with algae scrapers. ( I have the kind that is the scrubber on the end of a long stick ). We finally found a generator... I lost a fish and an anemone, but everything else was fine.

Spend the couple hundred on a good generator, or whatever, for your tank(s) that holds thousands. I learned my lesson...

 

[King Nikon]

My livestock isn't worth thousands, but if it did I'd definitely have a generator to kick on if the power goes out. When I get the extra cash I think I'm just going to buy a small UPS and plug in just the powerhead and moon lights, they won't draw more than 15 watts, so it will last hours.

 

[Kharn]

My livestock isn't worth thousands, but if it did I'd definitely have a generator to kick on if the power goes out. When I get the extra cash I think I'm just going to buy a small UPS and plug in just the powerhead and moon lights, they won't draw more than 15 watts, so it will last hours.

This is one of the reasons I fear for having a reef aquarium...the power in our area goes out at random at least once a month and it can last some time too...I am already going to get a generator for my tank but since its going to be a species specific tank (no coral no NOTHING besides mantis) the relative power that it should require I would think will be somewhat lower then that of a full blown reef tank.

I have a small 2 footer at the moment that is freshwater and is housing a "mouth almighty" its described as difficult to keep in aquariums due to ease of infection, but the one I have has been happy for over a year and the power has gone off for 24hrs at a time, hes never shown ANY signs of dieing....besides the one time I had to remove a snail that was stuck in its mouth -_- there not called "mouth almighty" for no reason..... silly thing

 

[King Nikon]

Thankfully since I live in CA my heater is rarely used (both tanks run LEDs too) and I don't need to worry about the elements except for when the big earthquake hits... but then there's nothing you can do about protecting a tank anyway.