Power Outage=Total Loss

[aquaman04]

After suffering my 3rd extended outage in the last three years, my tank finally succumbed to the cold. During the warmer outages, I had used airstones on battery power which worked great. Apparently, coral reefs don't have water temperature of 48 degrees. My losses include :

1) pom-pom xenia
2) green starburst polyp colony
3) 4 year old yellow tang named Kelly
4) 3 year old coral beauty named Mary
5) 3 green Chromis named Flora, Fauna & Merriwether
6) 3 year old tomato clown named Marlin
7) 4 year old coral banded shrimp

An extreme bummer. I will have to slowly rebuild. My concern mainly is this. With the live rock at such a low temp & the substrate at the same temp, I'm guessing I also lost all beneficial bacteria growth. Is life totally over for this setup ??

I'm sure many others were dealt the same losses. I am now the proud owner of a generator (too late of course)

 

[inwall75]

Sorry for your losses. That stinks!!!

I wouldn't worry about your bacteria unless your Dissolved Oxygen went to zero (which is unlikely). Nitrosomonas (Ammonia oxidizing bacteria) and Nitrospira (Nitrite Oxidizing bacteria) live even in arctic lakes. They are a LOT more efficient at higher temperatures. In fact, at temperatures even higher than reef tanks. With higher temps, you get higher respiration and higher reproduction rates.

With that said, I think you're still going to "re-cycle". More than likely, you lost a lot of worms, chitons, feather dusters, etc. that you never see but are in your rock and are now rotting. This year, the kid I'm a guardian for nuked one of my tanks. I was SHOCKED at how many limpets, worms, pods, mysid shrimp, etc. my little 20g nano held. Their bodies literally completely coated the sand.

 

[MayoBoy]

Let me know when you get things back up and going. It's time to trim the cheato so you can have a huge hunk full of pods, worms, stomatellas, etc. to get things kickstarted.

 

[StephNewman]

I also lost most of y corals in the power outage. After all fish and corals having tosuffer through one night in the cld I thoguht everythign would die. The fish looked near death the ext morning and I quickl moved them and as manycoral as possile into a 20 gallon tank and took hem to my parents huse (who had electricity), the fishrecovered fine bt the cold wather was too much for the coral and I lost most of my coral including pom pom xenia, tonga mushrooms and montipora. Som of the silvetipped xenia sem to be fightingbut most don'look too good and I am execting for them to ot be able to survive but don't want to giv up on them just yet even if it does mean that they deteriorate in my tank, I wt to give them a cance to try to make it. My green starplyp colony s not near as ushy as it was but has quite a few suvivors. I know i I hadn't taken as uch stuff out of e tank after fridaynight nothing would have survivied saturday night (everythign I wasn't able to move is o longer living for corals) , so I was lucky to do so. However many of the other stuff seemd to suvive the cold wather. I had some brittleworms ut on the surfac that I thoguht ws dead but once the water temperure picked back up they started oving around, I had accidentall forgot my cucumber i there and i was still alive too. So your bacteria are probably fine a well.
One thing I was srprised about was that y flower pot oral seemed to survivie the first night just fine when it is suose to be a difficult coral to kee. So fargranted I hve only had it fr about two months i seems to be doing fine.
If anyone has corals they want to give to me to help me stock backup that would be wonderful. I realy love my pom pom xenia and ow they are all gone

 

[Hobbes8017]

Steph

If you are free Saturday, there is the Frag Workshop at my house and you can get some new corals there. We are all going to get the chance to learn to Frag some corals and then you get some of them free. I have a rock of Xenia that I am going to frag that day. You are welcome to some.

If you cant make it, let me know. I goto Gateway from time to time and could get you some Xenia.

 

[Dert42]

i am in the process of fragging xenia and gsp.
free to any reefer effectedb by the power outage!
pm me.
should be ready next week.

 

[Hobbes8017]

Dert

I lost a lot of branches in my large pine trees, does that count as being effected by the storm?