54 hours without power = 100% fish mortality

[pinhead]

Well, I wasn't quite as lucky as Raf and Diana and I am only a few blocks away. After the weeks of reading the threads about generators and power outages I got hit bad and I don't know how much will survive.

Our power went out 4:00am friday morning and didn't go back on until 10:00 this morning. I've done water changes today and put in some Chemi-pure and charcoal but I am not sure how many of my corals I will be left with. I had already lost about a dozen corals in the summer when the tank overheated. I guess I finally figured out how to kill anthelia.

The tank was only a 33 gallon but well established for 4 years. We have a wood burning fireplace upstairs and gas downstairs so the house was chilly but not really cold - about 13 Celsisus. I was able to float containers of warm water in the tank because we have a gas stove, but you end up with warmer water on the top compared to the bottom because of no circulation - plus you can't keep that up for over 2 days.

The Yellow Tang went first friday evening and I was able to remove its body. By saturday morning the Clarkii clown and the Ornate Wrasse were dead. Couldn't find the bodies of the Bicolour Blenny, Firefish or Yellow Clown Goby. Last to go was the Blue Devil Damsel who was the original occupant of the tank when it was cycling.

The high ammonia levels were stressing the corals and the tank was getting cloudy. Tried a water change last night but I know it didn't help when the pods and bristle worms began to die.

This morning it was like a massacre. All crabs dead. All snails dead. Brittle star dead. RBTA missing and probably dead because it was moving all over the tank last night. Sand bed in serious trouble because there were a lot of dead spaghetti worms that had crawled out overnight. Hairy mushrooms melted. Sinularia and Devils Hand flopped over with tissue loss and the base Other mushrooms, ricordia and softies detached from their rocks and probably lost. My nicest zoos either missing having detached themselves or slimed over. Montipora who knows - haven't seen any polyps.

What seems to have survived is the LPS, Yellow Polyps, some zoos Palythoas, Gorgonian (although encrusting gorgonian is gone) and GSP. We'll have to see if they survive after the water changes.

So my tank looks very different from a few days ago - bare.

Boxing day sales coming up.

[Delphinus]

What horrible losses. I'm so sorry.

[christyf5]

How horrible! So sorry to hear that.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Aww man I'm really sorry.

[Tom R]

I understand your pain. I was so luck the first time my power went off for only 16.5 hours. I was getting desperate, I can only imagine what you went through. My lesson was no matter what size of tank you have you must have a DISASTER Plan.
I went out and bought a 950W generator for $269.00 at Army & Navy. On Friday my power went off for just 3.5 hours and the generator worked fine. Just a little noisy.

Good luck hope the Boxing Day Gods are good to you.

Tom R

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Doug,

Come on over when your tank recovers & I'll have some frags for you to help you get started. I have about 10+ of those bright green zoos of yours so I can frag you a few of those too. Got some candycane/trumpet & we'll see what else. This sucks man but pm me when your tank is cleaned up & ready to start up again.

Anthony

[Diana]

We are very sorry to hear that! We were able to save one of our friends tanks and fish just down the road from us. She was like you without power for 50 hours. Wish we would have known you were so close and had problems, maybe we could have helped?

[Chad]

Its really sad it hear about loses..

I am really surprised people are still unprepared. We have been discussing this for a good three weeks. Everyone really should have atleast a battery powered airstone. Cheap and easy and could very well save your tank. I suggest to anyone who reads this that does not have any sort of backup when power goes out to go and get the battery operated airstone. It will save you a huge headache.

[Diana]

(that was posting Raf above)

This is terrible... are you in deep cove? If we had known you could have brought your fish at least over here, we had a generator and then the power went back on saturday morning. Alas its no use to wallow in "what could have been".

We have TONS of frags on the bottom of my 33 reef so when your tank gets going again you can have some nice zoos and mushies.



-Diana + Raf

[Scavenger]

I always hate to hear of losses like this. I know the feeling of mass losses. Mine was a decease outbreak which cost me all but 2 fish. And it was my negligence of not using QT that caused it. It seems to hurt more when it's your fault in my opinion.

Anyway, I've gone through a few power outages now without losses caused by it. I thought I'd post my extremely budget power outage kit for those also on a budget. This does however require your babysitting the tank for the period without power. I'm fortunate that I work from home and can be in attendance the whole time.

What I do, is once power is out, wrap the tank in blankets. I then set up the propane camp stove in a vented area and when tank temp goes down, start to heat up about 1 gallon at a time. (but not too hot). As I heat water I also break out the extremely high tech plastic soup ladle and start stirring the tank. For aeration, I pour the heated water from a few feet off the surface and don't worry about spills and splashes. I do this every 15 min to 1/2 hour when I'm awake. If sleeping, I set an alarm to wake me up every 2 hours to go stir and heat water.

If it is a long period without power, I set up a mirror to reflect light from the window into the tank, as it's usually winter and I'm warming the tank, any extra heat is a bonus.

Hope this might give some budget reefers an idea or 2. Best of luck to all during these dang nab winter storms.