7 days later, Power Restored!

Phew, just got power back after 7 days in the dark from Irene and all my aquatic friends made it out alive, happy and healthy. My sump went bad (registered some nitrites in there so going to toss the water), but the tank isn't looking so bad considering having no power for a week. Glad this is over, but never want to test how long I can run without power again, a lot of sleepless nights :-/. Thankful for the advice I got from 3reef, wouldn't have prepared so well if I didn't have such a great repository of knowledge! Thanks guys!

 

Congrats and glad your livestock made it. It sucks what happened to you but overall I am happy for you.

 

Wow! What were you're methods for getting through this? Congrats

 

Thanks ReefBruh. Tell me about it sucking! The power was restored literally 500 feet away last Tuesday! It took them 5 more days to get my street power and there were no down power lines between us! I was so upset and the electric company could not even give me a reason why it was off for us. Spoiled food is one thing and I wouldn't care, but losing my fish because the electric company prioritized businesses before residents is asinine to me. We are all customers, no one should get preferential treatment and it sure appeared that way.

Well first day I used only battery air pumps and my car inverter to power a small 100watt heater. After about 20 hours of that I decided to hook up my portable generator. We had a rough ice storm last winter and I lost power for 5 hours. After dealing with that ordeal I did some research and bought a digital inverter generator. Very important to buy an inverter generator! They are more expensive but they keep the flow of electricity constant and that's important for motors and pumps. So the next 6 days consisted of some sleepless nights checking the temp and making sure the air pumps were running and filling up the generator every 6-7 hours, but all worth it to save the fish. Now I'm in the process of making 40 gallons of new water to refill the sump and do a water change on the tank.

For reference here are some of the products I bought:

- 2000 Watt Generac Digital Inverter generator (about 550, and 2K watts was more than enough. Even powered my fridge with it.)
- Silent Air B11 back up air pump (this air pump is amazing! Automatically detects when power is lost and kicks on within a second and 2 D batteries lasted 40 hours!)
- Azoo Battery air pump (not automatic but used as a back up in case the first one failed, always have back ups!)
- Tom Aquatics Stellar W-60 Air pump (used when running the generator, def has more kick than the battery operated pumps)

Those were the main pieces that kept everyone alive. I don't have many fish in my tank so I didn't really need a filter running, but my nitrates are up into the 20s now so may have been useful but ohh well. Also one more piece of advice: Don't run your generator back to back refills constantly. I would give it a rest for 2 or 3 hours after each run to let it cool down some. You can easily overheat a portable generator if you are running it too much and then you will be in serious trouble if it does not work. So its important to have battery operated pumps along with the generator.

 

Wow and I was freaking out when my power was out for a 30 hrs. I really couldnt sleep.. Just kept mixing water to keep the water oxygenated.
Congrats on no loss

 

wow thats awesome, my power was out for 3 days and i lost all my fish, sps and zoas :/ only some hammer and gsp survived oh and my pom pom crab -.- sucked.

 

did you have anything providing any oxygen to the water?
Did you figure out what actually killed the livestock? the drop in temperature or oxygen

 

Glad to hear your power is back smackrock. Sucks it took so long, the power companies unfortunately are regional monopolies, so they are never going to have too much motivation, other than to keep those with lobbying power happy. Certainly a generator seems like a good move.

 

Congrats on everyone making it through and being so well prepared. Congrats on the power finally being restored after a ridiculously long time.

 

I like to hear that by being prepared for this, you were actually successful in keeping everything happy and alive. Good job man!