A few weeks ago I lost power for 24 hours. The long and short is my 40 gallon breeder with multiple acro frags and zoas dipped down to the 60s in temp for about 18 hours. A few acros rtn, and some are just now starting to stn from either tips down and/or base up. Dkh and other basic parameters have been rock solid. I started acclimation mode on my radions to prevent anymore stress. So what's next? Is there anything I can to to prevent more loss and should I expect more loss in the next few weeks? I started to believe I was having some other water issue because the corals still look bad and ones that initially looked like they we're going to do ok are now showing signs of stress. I could run off and do an icp but ultimately I'd end up doing water changes anyway if there was some other underlying issue. I've done ~50% wc in the last few days just in case. Any suggestions besides just try to maintain stability again? It is normal for loss to continue weeks after a traumatic event?
Power outage for 24 hours... what to expect
- Thread starter cflow
- Start date
Oldreeferman
New member
Water change was a grand idea due to probable soft coral toxin release, and if that being the case filtering with carbon is a good first start immediatly even before getting temps slowly back to normal.
I would definately run carbon now tho even after any water change.
Due to temp shock not much can be done but slowly re-establish norms & see how the corals fare long term as you said.
Im no scientist but shock is shock, i also lost my heat a yr. ago for a day in mid Winter & my generator can not be used on electronics so i placed multiple zip lock bags of very hot water in my DT replacing them every 15min, it was a real headache but worth my time & luckily i was off work at the time, was able to keep temp above 70 but just barely.
Another issue you had was low oxygen, i ran 2 battery operated bubblers in my tank as well so low oxy also effected everything in your tank, nothing you can do about that now.
I doubt there is much you can do at this point but what you did as in slowly re-establishing water flow, oxygenation, & temps back to norms and see how things fare, all corals react differently to stress and you are going to have issues.
My advice now is get yourself either a good generator set to power delicate electronics OR go my cheap rout with plenty of fresh new batteries in house & battery bubblers & plenty of large zip lock baggies at the ready by the microwave, i used distilled water just incase of a leak also.
Good luck & hope they recover for you in time. A Reef tank is a biosphere balancing on total failure akin to the space station you control everything like a God so having backups is a must do cheap and exhausting or expensive & easy on the mind.
I would definately run carbon now tho even after any water change.
Due to temp shock not much can be done but slowly re-establish norms & see how the corals fare long term as you said.
Im no scientist but shock is shock, i also lost my heat a yr. ago for a day in mid Winter & my generator can not be used on electronics so i placed multiple zip lock bags of very hot water in my DT replacing them every 15min, it was a real headache but worth my time & luckily i was off work at the time, was able to keep temp above 70 but just barely.
Another issue you had was low oxygen, i ran 2 battery operated bubblers in my tank as well so low oxy also effected everything in your tank, nothing you can do about that now.
I doubt there is much you can do at this point but what you did as in slowly re-establishing water flow, oxygenation, & temps back to norms and see how things fare, all corals react differently to stress and you are going to have issues.
My advice now is get yourself either a good generator set to power delicate electronics OR go my cheap rout with plenty of fresh new batteries in house & battery bubblers & plenty of large zip lock baggies at the ready by the microwave, i used distilled water just incase of a leak also.
Good luck & hope they recover for you in time. A Reef tank is a biosphere balancing on total failure akin to the space station you control everything like a God so having backups is a must do cheap and exhausting or expensive & easy on the mind.
Thanks for the input. A generator is probably my next big purchase for this hobby. I changed the carbon around the time of the incident. Maybe I'll change again. I didn't think about chemical release after so much stress. I also lost a fish. Luckily my bacterial capacity seems to be healthy. I've had no rebound issues with algae or diatoms after the failure.
Oldreeferman
New member
If you are curious how your pods fared check for them after the lights have been off a few hrs with a flashlight looking at the glass & substrate using a magnifying glass. They should be swarming all over in various sizes feeding.
If it looks bare you may want to re-seed some.
Im curious if they survived ok as my tank just swarms with them from micro black dots moving about, which ive no idea what they are... to big pods running about everywhere.
If it looks bare you may want to re-seed some.
Im curious if they survived ok as my tank just swarms with them from micro black dots moving about, which ive no idea what they are... to big pods running about everywhere.
