Power Outage!

WillyRBeek · Jun 13, 2008

There's a huge forest fire not far from my house and it's knocked out the power. This happened about 2-3 hours ago and i'm posting from a friends house right now. I'm just wondering, how long will my tropical fish be able to survive in thier tank with a pump and heater off, and is there anything I can do to help them, as i'm not sure how long the power is going to be out.

OldMan47 · Jun 13, 2008

They should do fine for a few hours. If the filter media doesn't get enough oxygen, you may lose most of your bacteria and end up with a mini-cycle.

JenCliBee · Jun 13, 2008

one option is getting a clean bucket put ur pump/filter in it with the heater and take it 2 ur friends house if u think ur power will be out for a while. it should work and may even save all ur fish

jen

piranha_tim · Jun 14, 2008

JenCliBee said:
one option is getting a clean bucket put ur pump/filter in it with the heater and take it 2 ur friends house if u think ur power will be out for a while. it should work and may even save all ur fish

jen

A fish could live in a ziplock freezer bag unrecommendly for almost 7 hours. (if not more ... most lfs transport fish this manner.)
So it really depends on the stock of your fish.
If the fish stock is minimal and the air temp of your house isn't too cold or hot it could be almost a day. (not ideal)
As mentioned by others keeping your filter media oxygenated and the right temp can save you re-cycling the tank.

Good luck.

I too could suffer from this problem but plan on shortly investing in power back up with is like $74

rocknurworld2006 · Jun 14, 2008

you may need to wrap tank with sheets etc to keep in warmth

WillyRBeek · Jun 15, 2008

UPDATE:

I live outside of the city, and was at a friends place in the city when I posted the original message. Not long after I posted it one of my friends called me to tell me not to plan on going home, as all the roads out to where I live were closed off, and are still closed off now(Although today an hour and a half long detour route opened up, hence how I was able to just get home about 20mins ago). I was talking to one of my neighbours on Saturday and he said power came back on at our place around 12:30 Friday night, so the power was only off for about 8 hours or so.

As soon as I got home I ran to see how both my tanks were doing. In my established community tank everything seems to be fine. All the fish seem to be healthy(Although they were very hungry) and all the equipment is doing fine. In my other tank that i'm just in the process of getting up and running, the Gouramis I have in there seems to be doing fine, but the filter burned itself out(I bought the tank and the equipment 2nd hand, so it's pretty old anyway), but everything else seems to be fine.

I'm hoping the main roads will be open tomorrow so that I can get back into town to purchase a new filter, but aside from that small glitch, I seem to have avoided what could have potentially been a disaster, so i'm happy with the outcome.