Survived With No Electricity!

[mbsqw1d]

Hi people!
Last night at 6.30pm our electricity went off! Everything, all at once with no warning. I rent a flat above an estate agent who are also my Landlord. I only have access to a small fuse box which I checked and everything was fine. I have no emergency contact number for the Estate Agents and at this time they were closed and no one was there. In a nutshell.. we were without electric for the night! My thoughts eventually turned to my fish. With no previous experience of this happening I kinda thought they were doomed

It was getting cold (especially with it snowing outside!) so I got a duvet and covered the tank with that. Luckily, we have a gas hob. So I heated a pan of water and syphoned some into the tank.

I thought that the sponges from the (internal) filter would be best if they were removed and placed in the tank.. This morning I was happy to find them all alive but the temp at dropped to 20 C. So I heated some more water and again syphoned some in.

I got the leccy back on this afternoon (Manweb found a loose wire at the meter (in the estate agents) )

So well done my fishies! And just wondered what you lot would do/have done in a similar situation..

 

[chrisrm]

read my post below...thats wat happens if your not prepared! My link

 

[mbsqw1d]

read my post below...thats wat happens if your not prepared!

sorry.. can't find your link to said post..

 

[Assaye]

Well done for keeping them alive!

You might have a mini-cycle now, though, so watch out and test your water

 

[Mikaila31]

Should be fine if it was only overnight. Placing the sponges in the tank is a good move.

I know what you mean by cold too. Our furnace wouldn't work yesterday and it was below 0(F) outside. Luckily we still had power so we had both our kitchen stoves open and running and a couple little heaters around the house. Furnace came back to life later that night.

 

[darklight]

Well done for keeping them alive.

What did placing the sponge in the tank do? In your sig it says you have an internal filter, so surely the sponge was already in the tank, in the filter?

 

[Mikaila31]

Well done for keeping them alive.

What did placing the sponge in the tank do? In your sig it says you have an internal filter, so surely the sponge was already in the tank, in the filter?

It doesn't do a whole lot with a internal. If you have a small external like a HOB, it can mean the difference between a mini cycle or not. With my canister I periodically draw water through the filter after 8 hours have gone by with no power.

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Back before I knew how to keep tropicals my little brother had a five gallon plastic tank that had a few random fish. We went away for a week in the middle of winter, so we turned the heat off in the house and left the tanks heater on. When we came back we found the heater had broken and the tank had frozen solid, killing everything but the angel fish (yeah, I know ). Still don't know how the angel survived...

 

[erk628]

Back before I knew how to keep tropicals my little brother had a five gallon plastic tank that had a few random fish. We went away for a week in the middle of winter, so we turned the heat off in the house and left the tanks heater on. When we came back we found the heater had broken and the tank had frozen solid, killing everything but the angel fish (yeah, I know ). Still don't know how the angel survived...

Your lucky your pipes didnt freeze!

 

[waterdrop]

There have been some great writeups in the past on TFF of tips and tricks to handle this scenerio. I've done the thing myself of manually exchanging the water in the filter every few hours (a longer 5-hour stretch went ok for some sleep) to keep the bacteria alive. There are also ideas about filling plastic milk jugs or water bottles or such and lowering them into the (hopefully by now wrapped or otherwise insulated tank) water, assuming you have a way to produce some heated water.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[fett999]

I haven't had the problem yet and i dread it happening. When I've got the money I'm gonna get an electric storage socket which people use for their computers. It's basically a box that plugs into the mains then you're pumps and stuff plug into it and they work as normal, except that the box also stores up power so that if there is a power cut everything plugged into it still has power for up to several hours.
They're not cheap as far as I've been able to find but if it saves my fish then I think it'll be worth it.

 

[Ace Of Spades]

Unless you really have a problem with electricity going off a lot, I doubt you'd have to spend much time in this area. I remembver this one member here who had their power going off all the time as they lived far away from a town. So s/he had to buy a generator so that when the power did go down she could keep the important things such as the filter and the heater up. The only thing you really can do is keep an eye on your temperature of your tank and make sure you have a surge protector to protect all of your equipment.

 

[fett999]

I've definately got a surge protector running. I have one for all my important equipment after my wife had her mobile fried by a surge. (She was NOT happy )
Thankfully, living in a town we don't get too many cuts but it only takes one when you're asleep to cause a problem.
Definately well done for keeping them alive.

 

[Gilli]

I did a very stupid thing a while ago - turned off my external filter and forgot to turn it back on! 24 hours later I noticed it and nearly feinted! I was expecting the worst but everything was fine - no bacterial die off - no spikes, all was well. The annoying thing was last time we had a power cut just as we were going to bed at 12.30pm I stayed up worrying for the 5 hours the power was off - took all my sponges out of the filter and put them inside the tank, ran a battery powered air pump, put the gas fire on etc etc - and all for nothing as all would have been well anyway!!

I think we all panic too much - if its more than 24 hours then worry!

 

[timolol]

Haha you guys won't believe this, but the power went off the other night just before I was going to go to bed. My thoughts immediately turned to my 35L tank with little glowlight tetras in it and keeping them warm. Not really a huge fan of adding hot water to my tank, so I decided to "hug" my tank to sleep to keep it warm. I wrapped it up with some blankets and literally hugged it to sleep whilst sitting on a chair. Power came on about 2 hours later... temperature in the tank had barely dropped at all. Not sure if my body temperature did much, but hey all my glowlights were happy the next morning.