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.