OH no! The electric company will be shutting down the power to my neighborhood tonight from 10pm for 10 straight hours for some repairs. It just hit me that my filter is running on electricity! Will anything happen to the fish?
CRAP! what do i do??!??!?!
- Thread starter SDRANGER619
- Start date
Depends. On how many fish, what's the setup? Plants?
In a lightly stocked tank, the fish will be fine. You'll want to rinse the media out and empty the water that's sat in the filter when the power comes back on. You can monitor, and if you see them gasping, add some surface agitation (battery powered aerators aren't too pricy, but even stirring the tank vigoursly once an hour will help).
Planted tank, medium stocking--likely, you won't need to worry about anything. Rinsing media would still be a good idea, but not as crucial.
Heavily stocked, no plants--plan on doing water changes. Rinse the media and such as above, but still remove about 10% of the water every hour and replace with fresh, and plan on aerating the tank.
In a lightly stocked tank, the fish will be fine. You'll want to rinse the media out and empty the water that's sat in the filter when the power comes back on. You can monitor, and if you see them gasping, add some surface agitation (battery powered aerators aren't too pricy, but even stirring the tank vigoursly once an hour will help).
Planted tank, medium stocking--likely, you won't need to worry about anything. Rinsing media would still be a good idea, but not as crucial.
Heavily stocked, no plants--plan on doing water changes. Rinse the media and such as above, but still remove about 10% of the water every hour and replace with fresh, and plan on aerating the tank.
well i guess i'll be ok...i only have two Danios and one cory...
it's a 55 gal tank.
It would be easier if the power was off during the day but it will be off while i sleep...hopefully the little guys will be ok.
it's a 55 gal tank.
It would be easier if the power was off during the day but it will be off while i sleep...hopefully the little guys will be ok.
Are you cycling your tank with the 2 danios and 1 cory? Might make the cycle take longer. Definately lots of water changes!
Since you live in California, and Im guessing there are sometimes planned blackouts because of the energy crisis, I suggest getting a UPS (uninterpruptable power supply) for the future. They just have batteries inside a surge protector, so when the power goes out everything connected to it will still work. A small one should be OK, as long as you dont have your tank lights hooked up to it or anything like that.
tel0004 said:
Unless you're getting a pretty sizable UPS (I'm talking a $1000+ data center solution type dealy) it won't last you anywhere near 10 hours. With just a filter and heater you'll probably drain any consumer level UPS in a max of 2 hours.
I get a whopping 15mins out of my UPS, a Cyberpower 1000VA 650W UPS. Granted I have 2 computers and my 2 tanks pluged into it, but it's still only rated for a max of 82mins.
We had no power for 12 hours lately due to a hurricane. All we did was hook up a battery powered "air" stone. There were no problems with the canister filters being down for that period... The aquarium is 125 gallons. Any longer than that might be pushing it....
UPS are nice (I have one), but not really necessary. Battery operated aerators are good if you live in an area where this type of thing is common. 10 hours is a substantial amount of time, but probably not long enough to do damage to your tank, since it is VERY lightly stocked. Like OrionGirl said, stirring could help. I'd actually prefer taking a bit of the tankwater in a small bucket and dumping it back into the tank every so often to replenish some of the lost dissolved oxygen.
On the whole, I don't think you should be too worried =P
On the whole, I don't think you should be too worried =P
What I did in a power outage is parked my car outside the window and ran an extension cord out to my car(I have a power inverter mounted in my dash* and let it idle for about 15 minutes, then off for a half hour, repeat 
I don't think that's nececsary though, I was bored.
I don't think that's nececsary though, I was bored.