How do you prepare for electricity outages?

As others have said I use lightly stocked tanks. I also have plants which will help somewhat. On a couple of my tanks with more fish I have a backup battery powered pump that kicks in when the power goes out (and isn't too expensive). This creates some circulation and I place my filter sponges in the main tank so they keep getting fed with circulated water.
 
Prime

When power is out the first thing I do is to add a full dose of Prime to the tank to contain any ammonia. At my 8.0 pH any ammonia is a bad thing.

In the overstocked discus tank, 16 big fish in 105 gallons, I have a battery operated airpump tht comes on automatically that keeps the sponge filter in there running. the HOB filters I wouldn't worry about until several hours had passed.

In the other discus tank I have canisters which are more of a concern but that tank has live plants so if I can open the shades to get sunlight on them, they will do OK, pretty much.

Now, in the case of a hurricane, I'd store a lot of water in a barrel for fish water, clean the filters well before the storm arrives, reduce feeding. When the power is out, I'd uncover tops and net the tanks, run the battery airstone/sponge filter, add Prime, don't feed at all. After the storm is done, the first water change can be dangerous if floodwaters mixed with watermains, and the water company may add nasty chems to the lines and not tell you. Be cautious with changes, smallest, least important fish first!
 
The advice offered by anonapersona is good and sound. I already have lots of water stored anyway, as I age my water. About 1/3 of my tanks are open topped, none are overcrowded other than fry tanks for some period. I shallow-tray my biomedia after several power-out hours as it largely canister-housed and could suffer oxygen lack sooner than in-tank sponges or even HOBs - the shallow trays provide some O2 by simple diffusion. I do not feed during outages either - that is a good reminder. Two-three days without light is no worse than a blackout, so higher plants are generally not seriously affected.
 
ALso Another thing to note is, go buy an inexpensive UPS power backup. For most models around 3 hundred dolllars, they will run a couple filters for many many hours. The one I use will power one Aquaclear 200, 2 Biowheel 350's, one cascade 350, and one airpump for my 2 sponge filters. For 18 hours continuously!!!!! (I tested it on one of my off days) and I bet if you cycled it, 2 hours on 2 hours off it would double that. So IMO thats good enought for here in TX where the only time power is out is if something breaks and thats no longer than 24 hours.

This is what I use:
UPS Supply
 
Most of my tanks would be this way, but I do have one african cichlid tank that is stocked tokyo style!! And it would not last more than 12 hours (I'd guess) with no biological filtration.
 
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