Power Outage

[jayyy_boiii]

I'm vaguely unsure on what to do at the moment. We have 3 fish tanks, 1 40gal, 1 3 gal, and a 75gal. All of them are planted tanks. The power has been out for about 45 minutes now, and according to the power company, will be out for another hour or so. What should I do??

 

[Colin_T]

Don't worry about it.

If you really have to do something, get an airline with an airstone on one end and put the airstone in a tank. Blow air into the airline to create bubbles. Do this for a couple of minutes in each tank, about once every 30 minutes.

You can buy battery operated air pumps for this if it happens again in the future.

If you have HOB (hang on back) power filters, take a few litres of water from the tank, lift the lid of the HOB filter, and pour the water into the HOB filter. Do this a couple of times an hour during the power failure.

If you have an external canister filter, take the outlet hose out of the aquarium and put it in a bucket next to the filter. Let the bucket fill up with water from the filter. Then put the outlet hose back in the aquarium and pour the bucket of water into the tank. Do this a couple of times an hour during the power failure.

 

[Ram419]

If you can afford it, get battery backup units... Like the ones used for desktop computers. But, even those only last so long, depending on how many pumps you are trying to run. The ultimate device for this issue is a generator.

 

[Essjay]

Power outages for a couple of hours are not usually a problem. Ours was out for 8 hours a few years ago while the electric people did some work on the substation. The tanks and fish were fine.

 

[Uberhoust]

Power outs are common in the winter here, I don't worry if it is under 2 days without power. I keep the tanks at 25 degrees normally and they have dropped to 19/20 degrees. One caveat is that we have a secondary heating source of natural gas fireplace in the same room as the tanks, without that the temps would drop to 10 or less degrees which would not be good. It does not seem to affect the cycle but I do have planted tanks.