You would be surprised at how hardy the marine fish are, as well as corals and polyps... But an alternative power source for when the power does go out is crucial, here is my experiences, I'd like to share on why!
This wasn't the best environment, but in the winter of 1998 in Eastern Canada, (I was in Montreal at the time) we had an ice storm from Jan 4 that lasted almost 1 week straight of pure ice rain, it knocked out power in various parts of the country from only a couple of hours to (My house was out for 17 days) and a friend of mine was out for 36+ days!!!!! This was in the middle of January..
Believe me when I say this was not a fun time when temps during the night would be -30°, -40° and during the day it would be much warmer and there would be freezing rain again and it would all freeze at night. There was no power, running water etc.. Only if you had a generator would you be able to produce some heat. Unfortunelty at that time, I did not have a generator, blankets and a fireplace with a battery opperated radio were my companion.
In the basement I had my 125 gallon reef tank, go from a thriving amazing looking reef to a cold body of water in less than 24hrs.. I tried furiously to maintain some warmth in the tank by adding warm/hot water from the fireplace into coke bottles to try and maintain a tempurature. wrapping the tank in blankets and hand agitating my tank to keep some aretion going. (We never knew when the power would go back on, we thought it would be at any hour now) This was day 1.
By early morning day 2 of the ice storm, my temp in my tank went from 78° -> 62°. All fish were alive, all corals were alive!! Not fairing well, most fish were doing a great job hiding, most were probably in some type of shock, when I went to net them they barely tried to swim away.
At this time of my life, I was working at HAGEN in Montreal, and was able to transport my fish and corals to an aquarium there! Allot of people weren't that lucky.
Needless to say, power came back on at my house 16 days later, I had to completly rebuild my aquarium and wait for the cycle etc... Most of my live rock had died, all water paremeters had plummeted, it wasn't fun. But a good lesson learned and a costly one for everyone else who didn't have an alternative source of power!
Now, when I re-start into this hobby this summer, although I am in Illinois with a much milder winter than I am used to in Canada, I am still going to have alternative power sources for my tanks when the power decides to quit on me, because you never know when its going to come back on, and I don't have the luxery anymore of taking my fish and corals to my work!!
I know off topic with the power outage setup, but I wanted to share my experiences and tell how vital it is to have alternative sources of power. A friend of mine lost over $11'000.00 of livestock with Live rock included when the ice storm hit back then!! Just thought I would share a terrible experience and hopefully help anyone else out with thoughts on buying a generator etc....
Here is a little website I found in regards to the ice storm, if anyone is interested
Montreal Ice Storm 1998 -- Brief Story
Cunch
