No power, trouble for my reef again

[Ben1]

I left my local dive shop Thursday afternoon around 2pm, nice and sunny. Out of nowhere came a crazy windy thunder and lightning storm with tons of rain. The storm only lasted an hour but knocked out my power. I had just made plans to go out with the dive shop all Friday and most of Saturday. I got home Thursday and had to get packed for this dive trip and needed to get my tent and every thing checked so had very little time to deal with the tank. I have a small tank and a SPS reef tank. The larger SPS tank has a frag tank attached I moved a bunch of my trouble fish into until I could find them new homes. I was able to put a battery powered air pump on my main tank but only had one.

Power ended up being out about 30 hours. My little tank had a pair of maroon clowns, the male died. In the frag tank 1 of the 4 fish, a flame angel died. In my SPS tank a few nice SPS colony's RTN'd. Now my SPS tank is dwindling down to just a dozen colony's and some small pieces. Sad stuff indeed...Guess that's the dice I roll until I get a generator. My power almost always comes back on within an hour or less after an outage but this time I paid the price.

 

[Anonymous]

Ah Ben, that sucks. Really sorry to hear it.

It always strikes me as odd how often you guys get blackouts. I've not seen one since I was a kid (other than when I lived in Syria).

 

[Ben1]

Yeah that was the sad part of my weekend. I am still in a good mood though, because I had a awesome weekend getting my son certified.

 

[Anonymous]

Now, that is extremely cool. 8)

 

[Anonymous]

Now, that is extremely cool. 8)

yes it is

 

[Len]

Sorry to hear that Ben. I had a few 10 hour outages this year that had really negative effects on my tank (and this is considering I aerated the tank with two battery powered air pumps). I really need to get the safety connector/battery system hooked up on my Tunze.

 

[Ben1]

Sorry to hear that Ben. I had a few 10 hour outages this year that had really negative effects on my tank (and this is considering I aerated the tank with two battery powered air pumps). I really need to get the safety connector/battery system hooked up on my Tunze.

Yeah I need to think about a backup power source for my vortechs. I know they make one but I think I can do it cheaper other ways. Right now I am spending all my money on SCUBA lol. One expensive hobby is bad enough, two is deadly for me. :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

Sad to hear Ben. I had a similar incident, but my fish survived. I lost and am slowly losing two more. If I remember correctly it happened in March and I am still having problems. Good luck.

 

[dadstank]

is that dutch springs?!?!

 

[Ben1]

Yep Dutch Springs, we got season passes now so are going to be there a bunch. Are you local?

 

[jamesw]

Hi Ben,

Sorry to hear about your tanks - but glad to see that y'all are diving. That's awesome.

In places where it gets really hot, I recommend a backup generator, not just a battery backup. Because when the power goes out (at least here in the South) the tank gets stagnant AND hot in a hurry. You can get a small natural gas standby generator for $1500-$2,000. Hookup will cost more (unless you're an electrician I think it's worth it but I guess it depends on a lot of things. For our house, it's our hurricane backup plan so we can live comfortably until the power comes back on.

Cheers
James

 

[Ben1]

I had another big sps colony RTN halfway overnight last night, dont know why. I grew it from a tiny frag over the last several years. At this point I am seriously considering calling it quits with the big tank and sticking to a couple easy to manage nanos.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry...

 

[Ben1]

Thanks! Ive been spending all my time on scuba as well as money and at this point think I enjoyed my old SPS tank much more, it was simple and ran with much less issues. I think its also just me, I had a friend over last night for drinks who I have known for a long time. I told him about my issues and he said "no matter what you do don't sell it. I know you and in a few more months you'll be back into it and just buy all the crap over again" Made me think about it and I do seem to go through these cycles, I dunno.

 

[dadstank]

go easy to handle! it's easy to ignore....

 

[Anonymous]

Our new house came with a generator, but I now keep the tanks at work. Generators are fairly easy to use, and you can run them for brief periods during the outage just to heat up your house, circulate water, etc.

Short of a generator, I found a thing at costco which is essentially a large battery you can charge up while your power is on, and then use it to jump your car. I hooked one up to a $40 inverter, and ran stuff off that for quite a while once. You could easily keep 3 or 4 of these things charging during storm season without breaking the bank. It would be enough to keep a tank alive.

 

[fcmatt]

in most cases what is actually killing the tanks during the power outage?
i assume heat is the issue and then lack of oxygen due to stagnant water?


if heat... could not one just run to the store and get ice in ziplock bags to cool it off for
24+ hours? Yea i know it would take effort and time but would it work?

if stagnant water i see people mention battery powered pumps to get air into the water...
any other ideas?

 

[jamesw]

Heat is definitely an issue and so is low dissolved oxygen.

It takes a lot of ice to keep the temp down (especially in Houston) but that may work. A limewood airstone (tiny bubbles) hooked up to a battery powered airpump or battery backup is also essential.

Cheers
James