power outages

[TomFromStLouis]

I have a 75g with Eheim canister and lights on a timer in my office. The building is planning a power outage this Sunday for maybe 10 hours and put on the memo that 'fish should be removed from fish tanks'. LOL

Clearly they have not quite thought through where I might put fish for 10 hours, even if it was necessary. But it did cause me to think (always dangerous). If I leave everything as usual, when the power comes back on, the filter should crank right up no problem and the lights of course pop on. Any reason to think I should do anything special in advance?

[ChilDawg]

You are probably going to want to fill the filter so that it doesn't run dry from the start.

[JSchmidt]

The only thing to be concerned about -- and this is likely not a big problem -- would be the canister developing anoxic conditions and producing some nasty gas. I don't think that can happen in ten hours and certainly not if the canister has recently been cleaned or backflushed. I have had canisters that sat for a weekend without power and there were no problems when they came back on.

If the tank is seriously overstocked, you might worry about oxygen depletion in the water. A battery-powered air pump (available for about $10) would be cheap insurance....

Otherwise, everything should be OK. The canister should restart without a hitch. I expect you'll have no problems.

HTH,
Jim