Power outage?

Yesterday my electric went out, people working on the power line blew something up again! This is the 5th time I think. Well according to the neighbors it was out about 7 hours. I was at work. I got home when the electric had just come on. And my fish all looked like they were on deaths door step. The clowns were swimming sideways, my angel was pale and the wrasse head was turning white. The angel and wrasse were at the bottom and clowns were in the middle.

I turned everything on the minute the power came up, took the top off it was an oxygen problem tested the water, everything was fine. The only thing I could not test for alk because I was out of it. Everything looks fine today but how do I prevent something like this? What do you think it was?

I live in south Florida so hurricanes with power outages is fairly common during hurricane season. Is there any way to be prepared?

 

Generac automatic backup generator. Hooks up to your natural gas and comes on 30 seconds after the power goes out. This is the best thing. It will also power some or all of your home, depending on the size. Otherwise you can get a Stand By UPS to run a small pump or air stone.

 

You can have a battery backup and a generator. Keep a powerhead for surface agitation and the heater on the battery backup. The generator is for those many-hour outages, since a battery backup won't always last long enough.

 

Great suggestion since a budget was never announced! ;D And to add to this, you can get relays to turn power on in milliseconds after it cuts, not only 30 seconds. All about how much money you want to spend.

 

Wish I we had a gas line. Guess I can go with a battery back up for now, we do have a generator for when massive power outages occur.

Do you think it was an oxygen problem? Wouldn't they have been swimming up top? And none were breathing overly heavy

 

I can guess it may have been a pH problem, which is related to oxygen problems but has the potential to affect fish quicker than elevated CO2 levels.

 

When I tested last night ph was 8.0

 

this happened with my tank..I was out of town hunting and when a gfi on the outlet I use blew. I got back and the power had been out for around 20 hours and all but my clown fish were dead...he is doing fine now and that happened about 6 months ago.

 

I haven't tried this, but...

How to make your own battery backup

If it were located inside the house you should go with an optima red top or yellow top battery since they don't constantly leak harmful gases like traditional car batteries.

EDIT: That wasn't auto, but this is.
http://www.dansdata.com/upsupgrade.htm

 

This works very well... and its cheap:

Penn Plax Silent Air B10 Battery Air Pump at PETCO