Preparing For Power Outage, Worried.

[Freedom]

I have 3 community tanks.  I know many on here have more tanks, and more expensive fish.  So I'm sure many have thought this through.
 
I am worried about the coming power outage.  What should I do?  If it helps, I have a gas range in the kitchen, so I can light it with a match.  Do I warm up water and do water changes?   I have sunsun canister filters, they have a priming post.  Should I use that to move the water periodically?   Do I feed this morning and then nothing till post storm? 
 
Here in RI we are due to get 20 to 30 inches, winds of 30 to 75 mph.  Snow starts about 4 PM Monday (today), all night, all day Tues and most of Wed.  Power outages highly likely. 
 
I can tend to myself, my dogs and my cats.  It's the fish I'm not sure about what to do, what if anything to get to prepare.  (A generator is NOT going to happen, so you can skip that.)
 
Thank you in advance.

 

[LyraGuppi]

Wrapping towels around a tank insulates it, when the temp drops you can float warm water in a pitcher to help.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

There are only a few concerns when faced with a power outage. Getting oxygen in and co2 out of the water. Keeping the tank temp in a safe range. preserving the good bacteria.
 
The first is easy- get a few batter operated air pumps. You can rotate them between tanks. Failing that, agitating the surface at regular intervals helps.
The third is easy as well, move the bio-media out of the filter and into the tanks. it will stay wet and as warm as the water and, with battery powered air , the bacteria wil get what it needs as well.
 
It is temperature that you cannot do a lot with in any extended outage. We are now facing many days of very cold weather. With the amount of snow predicted, if one loses power, it could be for some time. Removing and heating water is useless in close to 0o F weather. You cannot win that battle.
 
For heat one needs electricity. For this one has few choices. An inverter can take power from a car battery- but again without a recharge it won't help for very long in freezing weather. The same applies to UPS we typically use for our computer etc. The best alternative is a backup generator of some kind. This is easy for me to say since we have a whole house backup system and even in two 13 days blackouts things were fine for us. In your case trying to find a small gas fired gennie is the only option. I am not sure if this is possible for you.
 
If you cannot get a gennie, then perhaps you have friends who do have one and you could get your fish over there. If so you can use Rubbermaid container and just bring your filters and heaters. If you do this be sure to feed very little to help hold down ammonia.
 
When temps are at freezing and below, no tank heater will win that battle.

 

[DrRob]

Yup, for short (less than a day) outages, particularly predicted ones, don't feed the day before, keep the tank warm with towels (the bigger the tank the longer it takes to cool, but the colder the room the faster it cools, so if you have another heat source use it to keep the room warm, we run log fires for a lot of the winter anyway, so power outages don't really cause much heat loss for us).
 
For short runs of a few hours the filters will be fine, for longer runs then keeping O2 to the media is important. You can get battery powered air pumps that can help (I've seen one rigged to an old undergravel uplift tube that kept a small amount of flow in a filter). Getting the media out of the filter and floating it in the tank can also help if you're struggling.

 

[squidneh]

I too am about to get hit with a massive storm...the snow has already begun falling.  We are expecting 30 inches by tomorrow afternoon with 70mph winds as well, so I'm in the same boat Freedom - trying to do everything I can to not lose my fish or plants.  My bettas I'm especially concerned about... but I am following most of the advice the others above have posted, but unfortunately a generator isn't in the cards for me.