King Nikon
New member
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.
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.