Emergency help

[RayL]

My power in the house went out and has been out for about 30 minutes. I have a 150 gallon and 30 gallon FOWLR, I don't know when the power will be back on. What can I do to make sure I don't lose my fish.

 

[scottwhitson]

Temp and low oxygen levels will be your first concern. You can take a pitcher of water and scoop it out and pour it back in the tank to help with oxygen levels. If the temp drops you could take a pot full of tank water and put on your stove (if gas) or on a BBQ if you have one and then slowly add back to tank. Hopefully power will come back on soon.

 

[brcb7tuner]

Try and keep it warm with blankets to keep the heat in, warm up some water and put it in plastic bottles. Other than that keep the water circulating by taking water out the sump with a pitcher and dumping it in the display to keep the oxygen up.

 

[RayL]

Have it covered in blankets right now, got a thermometer in the tank for temp updates.
How often do I want to mix up the water and if my tank is at 78.5 at what temperature should I start adding hot water at?

 

[patsfan1130]

78.5 is not anywhere near alarming but you want to stay ahead of it...I'd be agitating the water and putting some bottles of hot water in the tank now

 

[RayL]

My tank normally runs at 78.5, right now it's at 75.5 and dropping. At what temperature is it alarming

 

[dkeller_nc]

Hopefully your power is back on by now. But to answer your question, I wouldn't start with hot water bottles until your tank temp falls to 72 deg. Most of our saltwater animals will survive down to 65 deg F or so if that temp doesn't exceed a few hours.

If you decide you want to avoid similar situations in the future and don't wish to purchase and install a generator with an auto-kickover switch, you might consider a DIY UPS. Standard UPS units sold to consumers for computer backup just don't have enough capacity to run a tank's pumps and/or heater for very long at all.

So you can make a UPS that uses deep cycle marine batteries and an inverter/charger. Some of the inverter/chargers from a marine supply store come with an automatic circuit that will switch to battery power when the main power is off, and will automatically re-charge the batteries once the power returns. Typically, a 12V marine deep-cycle battery will run a return pump and a couple of powerheads for about 12-24 hours depending on the pump's size. Additional capacity is easy - just add another deep cycle battery and wire it in parallel with the first battery.

 

[RayL]

18 hours and a lot of work later my power is finally back on. So far I dont see any missing fish. Thank you to all that gave advice on what to do. I hope this didnt cause any damage to the fish that I am unaware of, I guess time will tell.

In the future I will be more prepared, thanks dkeller_nc for the back up idea

 

[brcb7tuner]

That's good. How cold did the tank get?

 

[RayL]

My DT dropped to 73, I worked hard to not let it drop too much. I was using the barbecue to heat up tank water and put back in. My holding tank dropped to 66, I didn't work as hard on that tank but I did a little but of work to keep it aerated.

 

[scottwhitson]

Glad the power is back and sounds like you have survived a disaster. How cold was the house? Just curious how much of a factor that had on the tank temp?

 

[RayL]

House dropped from 73 down to 64

 

[Spyderturbo007]

You might want to consider investing in a generator.

 

[Allmost]

Glad to hear it worked out well Ray,

I got power up last night at 3 am, so about 26 hours ....

those vortech's we talked about saved my Arse ... had back up battery on 2 of them, moved one in each tanks, and it worked the whole time ! i was surprised !

when power came back, tank temp was 68 ... everything stressed out here too, but seems like everything made it. I gotta find a way to heat up the tank in the future.

I have heard of countless reef set ups in the city crashing last night so far ... really glad we could pull through.

 

[Spyderturbo007]

Were you using a standard UPS, or the Vortech battery backup?

 

[Allmost]

Vortech battery. lasted over 20 hours on 2 MP40 ! first discharge though.

going to pick up 2 UPS today for future, hopefully to run a heater ...

 

[Spyderturbo007]

Awesome. I have one and thankfully haven't used it yet. I honestly hope I never have to use it, but it's there if I ever lose power.

I've been curious to know how well it works. I only have it hooked up to 1 MP10, so it says I can get up to 72 hours.

 

[Green Chromis]

:fish1: I would buy a portable or whole house generator for your aquarium and home. If you experience a bad storm you may lose power for days or weeks and a UPS unit will not supply power for that long. We invest a lot of money and time in our aquariums and a generator can be purchased for a lot less than replacing all the living organism's in our tanks not including the time to re-set up the tank. :fish1:

 

[GroktheCube]

Indeed. Even a decent sized natural gas standby generator is cheaper than the total investment in most 100+ gallon tanks.

 

[jkcoon]

another option is a hefty DC/AC converter.... I've done this before... put the car in the driveway, started it up, hooked up inverter and ran an extension cord to the tank for critical items (Tunze pumps for flow and heater)