My first long power outage experience with a reef tank

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Are you still out? Mine came back at ~8:30. Worst is when none of the gas stations have power. But yeah, like 9:05 it went out. Still a lot of people out

Just came back... temp is now at 71 which is pretty close to what I run it at, only issue now is the water went out...

 

[brandon429]

a thread on animal preservation during power outage/partial crash events

Reef Tank CPR - power outage biology, crash arrest, and recovery

Team Don‘t add bottled bacteria to the display during crash arrest as the cycle bacteria aren’t killed in still water. There are times where bottled bacteria can lower ammonia in fish holding containers especially if travel or transport is occurring, but by rinsing these displays out vs dosing...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

Just came back... temp is now at 71 which is pretty close to what I run it at, only issue now is the water went out...

honestly, I didn't think it was that bad (compared to 2017), for so many outages?

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Update: Looks like the only things I lost were the amphipods and mysis shrimp, ordered some galaxypods to replenish the microfauna and will keep an eye out for any of the amphipods/shrimp, tested parameters and they are:

Alk-8.9
Calcium-450
Magnesium-1080
Phosphate-0.06
Ammonia-0-0.02
Salinity-1.023

All these are their normal levels so no major swings, unfortunately the water is out so there's no way for me to clean these and reuse the vials for a nitrate test... on that shortly.

Assessor is acting like nothing happened (probably just hungry as they haven't been fed in 2 days) all corals normal except for the leather which is shedding and the galaxea which is very ticked. So far so good!

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Another update: spotted some of the mysis (in the refeugium of all places)!

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

Update: Looks like the only things I lost were the amphipods and mysis shrimp, ordered some galaxypods to replenish the microfauna and will keep an eye out for any of the amphipods/shrimp, tested parameters and they are:

Alk-8.9
Calcium-450
Magnesium-1080
Phosphate-0.06
Ammonia-0-0.02
Salinity-1.023

All these are their normal levels so no major swings, unfortunately the water is out so there's no way for me to clean these and reuse the vials for a nitrate test... on that shortly.

Assessor is acting like nothing happened (probably just hungry as they haven't been fed in 2 days) all corals normal except for the leather which is shedding and the galaxea which is very ticked. So far so good!

run down to Whole Foods for DI. It's $.49 a gallon.

 

[vetteguy53081]

If any of you reefkeepers live in Maine that you'll know the current situation, first long power outage for me, currently in the middle of it. First night, 9:00 PM, when the return pump shut off it cut the distance between the display and the sump, I plugged the WaveMaker into a battery backup and sat down, at 2:30 AM the battery backup ran out and I had to manually stir the tank every 15 min. 1:00 PM, got a small generator and plugged in tye lights and wavemaker, 4:15, got a smaller heater and a replacement return pump (I plugged it in to the generator and it refused to turn on, at some point during disassembly the impeller snapped) the tank is normally at 72 degrees Fahrenheit and dropped to a low of 64. Since I keep %90 LPS they weren't too fazed by the temp drop, acquired replacement return pump and plugged it in, the sump dropped much lower in temperature, didn't measure it but if someone wants to do the math, tank is 120 gallons, probably more like 90 or so with the rocks, at 64, sump is I think 30 gal, when they mixed the display dropped to 63.5 ish.. Anyway GHA algae refeugium started to decay, caught that maybe 5 min after I turned on the pump, took all of the gha out and replaced it with the overgrowth in my system, the only thing I'm really concerned about is any ammonia mixing as this is a no water change system and doing any water change would be tricky, no i dont have an ammonia test kit at the moment, some things like brittle stars and pods were alive in the refeugium so I don't know if it was that high of a concentration, only fish is a 2 in yellow assessor basslet (tank is 1 year 1 month old). 4:45, removed filter socks and replaced filter floss, tank is now 63.9 degrees. Now, 5:20, water still cloudy from mixing though should settle soon, temp is now 64.1 degrees, will clear out overflow grates and keep you updated, any advice appreciated

Temp drop lowers metabolism but Heat packs come in handy here. Tape to glass and cover tank with moving blanket and/or blankets to help insulate.
Battery operated pumps- Comes with air stones and agitates surface and provides a little water movement

 

[Readywriter]

I just had an idea that might be helpful for future power loss in the cold issues. My wife got me these cheap electronic hand warmers off amazon I think they were like $15. They have 3 heat settings, hot, hotter and hot enough to burn you and the batteries last a good long while. Pretty sure they put out enough heat to make the difference while getting a generator up and running.

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

I just had an idea that might be helpful for future power loss in the cold issues. My wife got me these cheap electronic hand warmers off amazon I think they were like $15. They have 3 heat settings, hot, hotter and hot enough to burn you and the batteries last a good long while. Pretty sure they put out enough heat to make the difference while getting a generator up and running.

$28 chair pad 13”x17”, $24 battery (15000mah) on Amazon. 89 degrees for >12 hours. Wonder if taping this to the glass would work for those without generators?

 

[Reef Puncher]

if it were my tank i would save the batteries/generators, for heaters over pumps. you can always do water changes to clean water, but you cant raise temp without a heater.

 

[hsp]

Sorry to hear about your power troubles. Awful! We lived in Pennsylvania for more than a decade and experienced this all the time. Now, in Sydney, Australia, this is not a real problem anymore as far as I can tell after a few years (and temperatures are mostly close to tank temperatures anyhow). Regardless, I have an APC Smart-UPS 1500. I have two power boards in my tank cabinet: (1) Grid and (2) UPS. Plugging the LEDs, Wavemaker, ATO, Dosing, Reefmat, etc. into (1) helps extend the UPS runtime in case of outages. Here is a screenshot of my dashboard: ~2 hours runtime. I note this would not be helpful for a multi-day outage.

Good luck, wishing your tank a full recovery.

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

Just came back... temp is now at 71 which is pretty close to what I run it at, only issue now is the water went out...

Are you out today.?

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Are you out today.?

Yep... good thing we got that generator, it's strong enough to run pretty much everything except the ato which I cannot fit on the power strip