How to prepare for power outages

[FishBR]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share with you some recommendations on how to prepare for power outages. I just went through hurricane Zeta and lost power for 3 days and 2 hours. This thread shares my experiences with only one tank: a low-tech, planted 55g tank with 10 juvenile rainbowfish (5 Boesemani and 5 Maccullochi), 5 Panda Garras, 2 Empire Gudgeons, and 6 Corydoras. The tank runs with a canister filter (Eheim 2217), and thus my experience does not help folks with other types of filtration. Anyway, here are my recommendation:

1. Make sure you have some battery-powered air pumps. They are awesome! My two pumps worked nonstop with two D-size batteries for more than 3 days. I was quite impressed.

2 Always have a sponge filter running in you tank. This will ensure that you will have biological filtration going after the power goes off. Just attach one of the battery-powered pumps to the sponge filter once you lose power.

3. Save the bacteria in your canister filter. If you go for a long period of time (more than a day) without running your canister, most likely all the beneficial bacteria will die. Hopefully, one of your friends or family members will get power back quickly and you can ask him/her a favor. Here is what I did. I brought my canister and a 20g bin to the house of a friend who had power. I filled the bin with dechlorinated water and attached the canister to the bin (see the picture below). Make sure you have some surface agitation so that you get well-oxygenated water. I then added 3ppm of ammonia to the bin so that the bacteria had food while the canister was running. Mare sure you use pure ammonia, with no additives. In the US, you can get this product from Dr. Tim:

https://store.drtimsaquatics.com/Ammonium-Chloride-Solution-for-Fishless-Cycling.html

It worked! After about 26 hours I came back to my friend’s house to test the water and got 0 (zero) ammonia and 0 (zero) nitrite. I then added ammonia again.

4. Get a hot water bottle. Temperature drop is a major problem. In my case, the tank’s temperature dropped from 77 F (25 C) to 65 F (18 C) in 3 days (the hurricane was followed by a cold front). The temperature did not drop more because I started using a hot water bottle. I just filled the bottle with hot water and floated it in the tank. Important: after the power comes back, increase the tank’s temperature slowly. Remember that the temperature dropped slowly, so It should come back slowly.

5. Do not feed the fish while all this is going on. You want hungry fish, not fish poisoned by ammonia.

So, things you must purchase in advance:

- Battery-powered air pumps
- Batteries
- Airline and air stones
- A water container or plastic trash bin
- Pure ammonia (ammonium chloride)
- Hot water bottle

I hope my experience will help others get prepared.

 

[AilyNC]

Thanks. What battery air pumps do you use?

I'd a 36 he power cut in August and a 8 hr at start of the month. The August one the temp dropped to about 14 degrees C so I went to local petrol station & got big travel mugs of boiling water. That helped with temp.

We've been getting more storms and with each big one a power cut so I want to be better prepared.

 

[FishBR]

Thanks. What battery air pumps do you use?

I'd a 36 he power cut in August and a 8 hr at start of the month. The August one the temp dropped to about 14 degrees C so I went to local petrol station & got big travel mugs of boiling water. That helped with temp.

We've been getting more storms and with each big one a power cut so I want to be better prepared.

Here are the pumps I used.

 

[Koglin]

Oh wow.

Sorry to hear - I was watching Zeta on my weather app. Hope you and your family/friends are doing ok.

Great job thinking on your feet about the filtration and cycled water! This is very informative for an extended outage. Smart move to just fast your fish for that time, and using hot water bottles to keep the tank warm (also good advisement about warming water back up slowly when power comes back on). You really handled it well.

That's a really smart idea too, sponge filter for a power outage since it just needs air. I've never tried a sponge filter - now I'm rethinking them. Might be a good excuse for me to go to the LFS, and just keep it cycled in the QT that is soon to be empty.

 

[Koglin]

Here are the pumps I used.

I use the same brand of pump (bubble box) for live minnows when I fish with them. Mine just uses 2 AA's - they work pretty well, ive ran the same batteries on multiple overnight fishing trips. It's probably 5 years old now but still works as intended.

*Edit - think is was only like $5 too in the fishing section at the department store

 

[AilyNC]

Thanks. Hard to tell on Amazon what's good of not.

 

[AbbeysDad]

An alternative to a friend with power for the canister filter... simply use a 5g bucket with an air pump, air line, and air stone. Take the canister filter apart and clean the sponges in sponge trays and set asside. Put dechlorinated water in the 5g bucket, bio-media tray on top of air stone.

 

[FishBR]

An alternative to a friend with power for the canister filter... simply use a 5g bucket with an air pump, air line, and air stone. Take the canister filter apart and clean the sponges in sponge trays and set asside. Put dechlorinated water in the 5g bucket, bio-media tray on top of air stone.

I agree. That is a good alternative.

 

[Jamesthecat]

Thanks for the good info - we don’t have too many power cuts here in UK but i once lost a load of corals during a 48 hour one when I wasn’t at home.

Since then I bought a cheap Smart UPS from EBay that quietly sits in a cupboard and monitors the power flow. If there’s a spike or dip it balances it out and in case of a complete loss of power it can run on its internal batteries for 72 hours.

Its connected the Web so sends texts/emails whenever it does something...

Sounds like a bit of overkill but for around £60 i think it’s definitely worth it