The Most Aweful Thing Happened This Weekend.

[SLC Flyfishing]

This past weekend I moved houses. I was living for a short while in the basement of my wife's parents and this weekend we moved into a new apartment. Well I left my 2 year old daughter's 5 gallon tank up in the in-law's basement over the weekend, planning to return on monday to fetch it. (It was a 5 gallon marineland hex 5)

Well, over the weekend there was a bit of a power hiccup and somehow the pump on the filtration system burned up. My mother-in-law said she heard a popping sound and went downstairs to find the room filled with smoke and the water in the tank all black. all four fish had died and the only one still alive in the tank was my daughter's dwarf frog. he was not looking so good either, probably poisoned by the blackened water.

I ran to the LFS and bought the nano cube I'd had my eye on for the last few weeks and rescued the frog. He wasn't able to swim properly but has since recovered well. swimming normaly and eating better than ever so that's good.

I just wanted to warn anyone who might have one of these tanks to be careful during power outages and keep an eye on the tank to make sure there's no mishaps. We're lucky that the house wasn't set alight.

SLC

 

[carrera]

ouch sounds terrible. glad you could save the frog though

 

[karen84]

Thats so bad, sorry to hear about it.

 

[timmystood]

OK... i'll stay clear of them tanks - thanks. And i'm sorry to hear about your losses.

 

[newfishaddict]

sorry to hear your trouble. I ve had a few close calls with power outages too...

I now have powerbars with batteries in them for each tank(costly but worth it), the one im using was designed for computer servers during power outages.

 

[dgwebster]

in general saftey as we are mixing leccy an water, the following is what I recommend:

Run all electrics through a RCDs (Residual Current Devices), one of those things that cuts power in the event of a grounding fault) and a surge protector. A simple solution is to pluge an extension socket with built in surge protector (the type made for computers) into a RCD (the type made for lawn mowers etc.)

The house electric circuit ring the socket is provided on should be provided through a particular fuse circuit breaker. Better than normal breakers which flip on a short, these ones flip *just at the start* before anything can really happen and are called MCBs. older ones will still allow the fualty item to blow/short however newer ones should cut the power before it gets a chance to do that.

 

[§tudz]

I suffered a power surge today, the power was out for a good 4-5 hours, but fortunatly all my fish survived, I was worried that the heaters may have exploded, but they were all fine.

My two 15gallon tanks suffered most, the fish were all gasping at the surface, prob due to lack of water movment? They are all ok now, well they were when I left earlier today. Got airstones in both tanks over night, just to be on the safe side.

I had some expensive fish one tank, so glad they all survived.


Dwarf frogs are hardly little things, they seem to survive most things, except over feeding, lol...

 

[dgwebster]

i dunno a power loss for up to 5 hours should not really have that kind of massive effect... with the water cooling due to the heater being out of order, the oxygen content the water can hold also increases for one. minimal amount but just an example.

Obviosuly though this is determined by the initial tank temp and the type of fish anyway.

I had ADF fail to survive being food a while back

 

[§tudz]

with ADFs it better to feed them every other day, instead of every day, or several times a day as some people do with their fish. I found that out the hard way, I now have 4 living in a tank on thier own.

I got frog spawn last week, but it got fungus and died I don't think it was fertilised either, nvm, maybe next time.

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

I had the tank all connected to a surge protector for that very reason but somehow it still managed to fry. The water pump attached to the filter had a hole melted in the side of it. I wasn't there when it all happened so I can't say with certainty but the pump had seemed to be running slowly during the past few days. It wasn't more than 2 years old but I think it wore out. So I just wanted to alert people of the possibility that this may happen to other tanks that are similar.

But then again it did happen immediately following a power outage?
Guess I'll never know for sure, the good news is that the frog is doing wonderfully in his new tank. I'm quite proud of the setup in this one. I'll be trying to post pictures soon.

SLC

 

[dgwebster]

that is reallly bizarre slc in that case

i know the feeling §tudz, ive had spawn a number of times now. first 3 times, eggs eaten by other fish, this time they hatched into tadpoles, but got eaten by the betta and the frogs. though not nice, im not making a proper attempt yet to breed them (hope to in the next year) and so it was at least a good meal for the rest. i suspect my dwarf gourami babies due tomorrow will go the same way.