Power outages

i lost a yellow tang, flame angel and red sand perch. big hit but could have been worse. all coral seems ok as do other fish. went down every hour and poured tank water through my HOT fuge and my skimmer. i would be interested in the set up for a deep cycle battery back up as the $$$ for whole house wont be in till next year.
 
I believe I've read that you want to disconnect your refugium if you can in the event of a power outage... or at least get the macro out of the main tanks water supply. I'm pretty sure macro can suck up the available oxygen in the tank pretty quickly.

Can anyone confirm this?

It's one of those things that I think I read somewhere, but can't remember.
 
I was with out power fur almost 5 hours last night ...I ran my tank on a deep cycle battery and an inverter for most of the outage ...so far everything looks ok
 
Power was out from 6-3am I hope everything is ok my tanksitter can't really tell me what's going ok well

Funny thing is around the same time the power at my house in Ohio went back on the power here in NY went out and they are not even bothering trying to fix it until tommorow night because my house here is on a small island and we are not important

At least my fish are warm....
 
make sure and get at least a 1000watt inverter or your pump will just knock and eventually burn up learned that last night hard way lost two powerheads and a main pump thank goodness i keep spares!!!!! let this be a lesson to all keep back up supplies you never know when your gonna need it .....was the first time i lost power for more than 5 mins in four years...
Sean
 
Sending this from work. Well so far the power is still out at home, been 24 hours. Couldn't get the generator to fire up so the tanks were out for about 14 hours. Doing the best I can but this could be a big hit if the power is out for as long as they say it could be.
 
From work.

Power still out. Went out @ 6:45 Friday night. Lost the single fish in my heavily stocked (soft coral) 40, a cherub angel. The clowns in the anemone tank still hanging in there.

I bought a battery back-up to run some pumps/air stones. Hope there are no more losses when I get home tonight.

Power company says we may not get power back until Friday. I hope they move faster than that.

I'll post again in a couple days with an update.

Ben, Cleveland Heights
 
My power was out 7hrs last night. I siphoned out 5gal buckets and dumped them back in 2 times ever 20 mins while the power was out. Had no losses, will be looking in to a better system for next time.
 
Here's something melev posted on my thread that is supposed to work better than just an airpump and airstone. (air lift)

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13359882#post13359882 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by melev
Rae, if you have a sump, take water from the sump in a pitcher and pour this into your tank. Do this 10 or 15 times, every 30 minutes. This will cause water to fall down to the sump, oxygenating it on the way down. Also, you will be creating flow with each dump. Make a real splash. Water temperature may drop, so keep an eye on the thermometer.

If you have a camping stove or gas grill, you can heat tank water on the propane burner and pour this into the sump, then take from that zone to pour into your tank. The more you can keep the water moving, the better your success rate.

Some people have taken a wooden spoon and put it into their cordless drill to whip the water and keep adding air. Obviously, don't nail a fish or coral doing this. The battery in the drill will only last so long.

It is a little late to make them now, but 'air lifts' would work better than a solitary airstone. They are easy to make out of PVC. You take a length of pipe that isn't quite down to the sand, and connect an elbow at the top. Drill a hole to insert rigid airline tubing through the elbow's apex and down the PVC pipe. Affix the airstone, or leave it without. The air pump will push big air into the pipe, and it will rise upwards. As the air rises, it draws water from the bottom of the tank up inside the pipe to the top and bubbles/pours out at the surface. A few airlifts can really help a tank with no power if the airpump is strong enough, but even one should help a system limp along for a duration.
 
Well i have taken a HUGE hit. My power has been out since late Saturday night/early Sunday mourning. I could just cry, 1000 feet to the right of my house power, 1000 feet to the left on my house power, me...no power! I just wanted to let you guys now a cheap UPS backup power system it ran my iwaki 100 for about 26 hours, and a 1000w heater, however the heater was not on much. Anyway you can use a computer APS unit, they are VERY cheap on ebay, and then just hack into it, taking out the small battery they are equipped with, add a few feet of wire and some alligator clips and just use a deep cycle marine battery instead on the small battery. I have used this setup for years with great success, no inverter to worry about frying pumps and it works the instant the power goes off, and shuts off and charges the deep cycle battery the minute the power goes back on.

My 400 gal reef tank is taking a beating, i have a friend about 10 miles from me with a 90 gal reef that is watching some of my prize SPS,and LPS and other corals, but i have WAYYYYY toooo much for him to keep for me, and most of my corals are rather large colonies as my tank has been running for about 11 years...this really sucks!! I am going tomorrow and spend money i do not have to buy a generator for my house, i hope my tank makes it. I have been bucketing water from my sump to my display every 45min-hour just to keep some movement, and i have been running my battery air pump to try to help. I have pipe fish and sea horses in my fuge, i do not think they are going to make it, i already lost my black tang, my powder blue tang, orbital bat, moorish idol, 1 of my male horses, 4 of my clams (3 left) and a tons of LPS stuff. My pulsing xenia is not pulsing, my GSP are kind of brown, i have severla acan lords not doing well, some crazy colored zoos that are loosing color, and a ton of other stuff not looking to good...I HATE OHIO EDISON...they are saying FRIDAY at the EARLIEST, and MOST LIKELY SUNDAY to return power...I live in a small town (Doylestown) and they will restore power to the most customers first, we will be the last since there is only like 10 of us on this line that is out...I love my reef, but this is enough to make me wonder if it is worth it.

Sorry to complain, i just needed to vent, I hope everyone else is getting by. I mean my family is safe, so all is ok in the world, just my reeef is not happy, and that makes me not happy!:(
 
Wow. That's just aweful. Really good suggestion about battery switch for the APS unit. I'll do that. My poorly charged unit ran two airstones (one in each tank) from about five hours or so. Hard to tell when it quit in the night. My tanks are small so it's impact is probably greater than it would be on a larger system.

The good new from Cleveland Heights is that the power came back on just a little while ago. Everthing fired up as it should, including my U tube style overflow, which I test pretty regularly (every time I do a water change).

Some of the corals look rough, but I think the rest may pull through. My tank temperature dipped to 70 degrees. I was ready to put some water on the stove. My only loss so far was the pygmy angel.

My heart goes out to those still without power.

BTW, I meant to write in my other post that my power went out SUNDAY night, not FRIDAY night. Sorry for the confusion. We were without power for about 36 hours only.
 
argh...

argh...

I'm in cleveland heights also. Power has been out since Sunday. As with many other people, the "word" is Friday at the earliest. I lost my flame angel the first day, and I can only find two of my chromies... maybe they are hiding.

Sunday, we took my sister to school in columbus, and this huge tree fell on our car. Smooshed it right up. Had to rent a car to drive back up here. My parents' house had power, no luck for me.

I actually bought an inverter for my car, and ran a long cord from my car to my tank. I was able to run my two Vortechs and my return pump. I only hooked it up to the cigarette lighter, so I was able to get somwhere around 80 watts. If you connect it to the battery itself, you can get up to 400w (they also had one that was rated up to 750w).

Yesterday a friend let me borrow a generator, so I'm using that for now. I am running my powerheads, return pump and T5's.

Will my sps make it to next week with no MH? or should I have those on when I can?
 
I still have power out here. If any east siders need to house corals/fish temporarily, let me know. I have some room in my 40g frag tank. My 75g is virtually empty and could also house corals. I also have a 100gal stock tank that we can whip together into a holding tank.
 
Hey Guys/Gals I have power and Plenty of tank space in my systems Anyone need a temporary home let me know. I am on the westside and I am off today!!!!!! Ben
 
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