Upgrading Power at house

[JDanneker]

I am upgrading our power supply at the house in the next couple of weeks. The power is expected to be down 4 to 6 hours. Fortunately, I do not anticipate a big temperature issue, however, I would like some advice on anything I can do to help while the power is down.

Thanks!

[johansonp]

You can drop an air stone in the tank and run the pump off of a battery and inverter. Or you could get one of these:

http://www.marinedepot.com/aquarium_air_pumps_hagen_battery_operated.asp?Cart Id=

That will give you a little circulation and aeration.

I suppose you could even fill up an air tank and run an air stone off of that for a good long while before it would need recharging. I'd be a little concerned about oil contamination though. Remember, I have OCD...

Paul

[DarthFred6996]

Agitate the water maybe to increase gas exchange. You can get a battery powered air pump and use it for the few hours if you want. Another reason to do this may be to keep the ph stable during this time as too much dissolved CO2 causes a drop in ph. I would not feed them the night before or the morning of the outage also. You can wrap a blanket around the tank to insulate if you think the temp will fall too much. Most of the temp will escape through the surface though and you really can't do much about that.

[Catpicklesdog]

To be honest if your power is only going to be down for 6 hours I wouldn't worry too much. Mine was down for 24 hours and I had no real probs, I certainly didn't lose anything (only the bread in the freezer!!). When I got past 12 hours I stuck a piece of tubing into the tank just to blow some air into the water. If you're worried about the temperature falling you could always wrap a big thick blanket around the tank and if you're worried about the temp rising you can always float bags of ice.