Tiger15
10-12-2003, 1:50 PM
Yesterday night there was a power outage on my street around 7 pm. It wasn't due to storm event but one of those random occurence in my area that usually lasted a short time. Without light, I went to sleep early and didn't do any thing for my tanks assuming that in the middle of the night, the light would suddenly turn on. It didn't. When I woke up at 7 am, still dark, I noticed that electricity has not returned. With a flash light, I checked all my tanks and the fish appeared OK except for one tank in which I house the largest fish including an 11-inch Frontosa and 10-inch Geophagus that I had for a decade. If the fish were short of oxygen, I would expect them to be gasping for air near the surface. They didn't but lied rather motionless at the bottom, panting and looked aweful in dim flash light. So I immediately hook up a battary air pump and started sihoning water from the tank to a bucket and pouring back to the tank to boost oxygen supply. The fish gradually revived and the electricity returned around 8:30 am, a 13 hours power outage. I lost only one bottom dwelling small leulupi and all fish recovered. If I waited just a little longer before doing something, I would have a total wipe out in this tank.
The lesson I learned here is that keeping light fish load is the best safe guard against power outage. All my other tanks were fine with no stressed fish at all because the fish load was lighter. This problem tank has the heaviest fish load not because of the number but the large size of the fish. Also this tank was due for water change the next day and the water is dirtiest on my routine biweekly water change schedule. If the power outage were to occur after the water change, the fish could probably tolerate a few more hours without stress. Dirty water houses large population of bacteria and they compete with fish for oxygen.
The lesson I learned here is that keeping light fish load is the best safe guard against power outage. All my other tanks were fine with no stressed fish at all because the fish load was lighter. This problem tank has the heaviest fish load not because of the number but the large size of the fish. Also this tank was due for water change the next day and the water is dirtiest on my routine biweekly water change schedule. If the power outage were to occur after the water change, the fish could probably tolerate a few more hours without stress. Dirty water houses large population of bacteria and they compete with fish for oxygen.