The Hurricane Prep Thread

rdmpe

rdmpe

New member
How is everyone gearing up for the potential of Ernesto? I have a 5500W generator and about 30 gallons of gas. But I don't have any portable AC unit. So my primary concern is how hot the tank will get if the house temps get high. I can freeze some ro/di water in ziplocks. Not sure if that will provide significant cooling or not though if the house is 95 degrees inside!
 
Boy will my wife be unhappy when she figures out that power from our generator will be used to keep the fish cool (chiller) but not the house.
 
Heat exchange may work easily if you have some electric, run a fan over your tank (or sump) but you will get evaporation problems so have fresh water available and mark the level the water should remain in your sump so you can replace small amounts when needed. Frozen 2 liters of water (not the water itself) works okay if you need to bring down temps short term. If you had 10 bottles, you should be good for 24-48 hours at least. You place the bottle in your sump/tank until the water inside reaches the same temp and then remove bottle.

If you have sensitive sps or lps corals, you could really set up an emergency tank that when needed, you move heat sensitive corals into and then run a college dorm fridge with pass through pipes to cool the small tank... this seems like overkill though.
 
You can make an emergency swamp cooler for an area by soaking towels and hanging them from lines in tiers with strong fans blowing: uses less power than a compressor and is mildly efficient: need not be drinking-pure. In the country, when the days were really bad, we'd hang a wet sheet in a doorway and windows. Gave a little human relief in the very immediate area.
 
Get a squeeze bulb you can work with your foot, run it to air hose and to bubbler in your tank. If absolutely everything else fails you can work it maybe enough to keep things alive until power returns. [I did it on a 3 day car ride, and everything came through.] Pouring water from a pitcher from a considerable height also helps; anything that forces air into the water. And there are the battery powered airpumps meant for bait buckets, not to mention UPC computer backups. One enterprising reefer got a medical-grade oxygen tank and let it discharge via an airhose into his tank: don't smoke while doing this.
 
For our 55 gallon:

I live in a condo and could not have a generator last year when we lost power. We bought an invertor and hooked it up the my husband's suv battery. We used a small 2 watt pump to help with circulation. We were out of power for a week and only lost one emerald crab.

Everything cost less than $100 bucks.

For my ten gallon:

We bought battery powered air bubblers that worked great.
 
At Seaworld, we do allot of hurricane prep. The large aquariums get 200 cu^3 ft. oxygen cylinders. These can either be bubbled using an air stone or in combination with DC powered bilge pump (aquatic eco.) The O2 is run into the bildge pump intake and atomized to a fine mist. This keeps your dissolved oxygen up for a long time with minimal O2 usage. On the smaller tanks we try to use generators or a gas powered air compressors. The compressors are fed to a manifold that splits off and powers a number of large airstones. (the air from the compressor must be run through a oil removing filter first).
If you have a chance I would highly recommend buying a small DC bilge pump from AES. It's pretty much works just like a powerhead and will run for a very long time on a 12V car battery. To keep the aquariums cool a large fan or fans will work very well. The more wind the more evaporative cooling. Just be prepared to replace the water.

Justin
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8022957#post8022957 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sk8r
Get a squeeze bulb you can work with your foot, run it to air hose and to bubbler in your tank. If absolutely everything else fails you can work it maybe enough to keep things alive until power returns. [I did it on a 3 day car ride, and everything came through.] Pouring water from a pitcher from a considerable height also helps; anything that forces air into the water. And there are the battery powered airpumps meant for bait buckets, not to mention UPC computer backups. One enterprising reefer got a medical-grade oxygen tank and let it discharge via an airhose into his tank: don't smoke while doing this.
Click to expand...

Actually I do have a 650watt UPS that will run an airstone for a little bit. I do have family with generators that can recharge one while I use another.

I didnt realize you could go 3 days on air alone, I figured you had to have circulation/filtration going too.

How about throwing my huge ball of cheato from my fuge into my display to help with 02 and waste during the outage?
 
Battery powered bubblers, like those you use to keep bait alive, work very well. Mine ran about 12-14 hours last time on a single Duracell. I bought large packs of batteries at Home Depot...they were a really good buy in the bulk packages. GL, Marcye
 
Oh, and we were out of power for 21 days and didn't lose a thing. We did have a generator after the first week, but before that we just did the bubblers. Also, before the storm we filled lots of baggies with RO water and froze them. We used those to float in the tank to keep the water cooler. After one would thaw I'd throw it into the cooler with the ice that I got from the emergency station and it would cool down again.
 
I wouldn't use the cheato, because plants do the reverse of oxygenate when the lights are out: they take in oxygen and breathe out co2. If you have a heavily planted tank, like seahorses, I'd pull them out to a barren tank with their same water; and if high oxy-fish like tangs and angels, oxygenate for all you're worth.
 
Hey, Sk8r, could you please explain the biology behind that? How does a plant accept O2 and expell CO2? I've never heard of a plant hording oxygen and am interested on how that works. Do you know a site with more details? Thanks.
 
My favorite:

wna_ecg.anim.3.gif


Mike
 
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