Power out --

Z

zippy

AC Members
Oct 26, 2004
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Good morning. I live in Seattle and we just went a week without power due to a strong wind storm.

Needless to say, we lost most of our fish. All fish in our 55 gallon tank died, including our breeding pair of daffodil cichlids and their offspring. Four fish in our 20 gallon survived (one swordtail, three danios, and our ghost shrimp). I thought all perished until I went in to clean out the tank yesterday afternoon and remove the dead ones and found the survivors lurking in the caves and under plants.

Anyway, now wanting to restock my 55 gallon. I'm interested in a pair of electric blue jack dempseys they have at my locas LFS. Any advice would be helpful. I'd be willing to get only one if that would be preferable for the size of my tank. Also, looking into the possibility of getting one elecric blue jack dempsey and a different cichlid that would be compatible for this tank. Not sure, though. We had great success with our daffodil cichlids and they were so fun to watch and care for. They had great little personalities.

Thanks for any response.

Happy Holidays!!!

Sally
 
I feel your pain. I live south of you in spanaway.

I only lost power for just over 48 hours..and spent every hour doing water changes and pumping air in my tanks. I was lucky and didn't lose any fish.but lost a ton of sleep.

on to your question.

a JD may get to large for your tank as they may reach up to 12"
it should be the only fish in there should you decide to use the 55 as a growout tank.

JD's are beautiful cichlids tho I can see how you would admire them.
 
A pair of ebjd should be ok in a 55. How large are they now?
 
I'm not sure how old they are. I went to the LFS yesterday to check them out, and they're about 2 to 2 1/2 inches long right now.
 
Make sure you look through the posts on health issues with these guys. It's important to be prepared ahead of time and recognize the symptoms. They are a little bit fragile (well, maybe more than a little bit). Anyway, they seem to be a little slower to grow, a little less aggressive, and physically weaker than normal jds. They're also beautiful and expensive! :)
 
rmcder said:
Make sure you look through the posts on health issues with these guys. It's important to be prepared ahead of time and recognize the symptoms. They are a little bit fragile (well, maybe more than a little bit). Anyway, they seem to be a little slower to grow, a little less aggressive, and physically weaker than normal jds. They're also beautiful and expensive! :)
Click to expand...

I know some experience cichlid keeper that struggled to keep the ebjd's alive.
 
Yeah i live in seattle too. I was strugling to keeping my arrowna alive by adding warm water to bring the temp slowly back up from the 60* coldness for 3days.

Lucky me, no one died.

But alot of people been having their fish die. I work at a LFS and alot of people tell me storys and ect, some even bring in fish for us to baby sit, if we have no room they said they will just donate it to us so the fish dont end up dieing.

Pretty crazy week.
 
In power outage, the number one concern is oxygen. Every fish hobbyist should have battery operated air pumps for emergency use. I purchased the Penn-Plax Silent Air B11 for each of my tank which, when plug in AC, will automatically start up utilizing battery power during power outage. I hook them up when I am on vacation.

Cold temperature is a secondary concern. Unless you live in very cold climate like Atlasca or Minnesota, a few days of below normal room temperature won't kill the fish. In fact, lower temperature will reduce the metabolic rate and oxygen consumption. It's the lack of oxygen that is the number 1 killer.
 
2 Jacks WILL NOT be ok in 55G, If they are anything like mine they will NEED 55G for ONE fish. Blues tend to get slightly larger then normal jacks about 13-14 inches (though my normal jack will give them a run for that title)
 
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