The electricity supplier strikes!

[Propellerhead]

Tragedy!

A couple of mornings ago I woke to find the power off, and that half of my clown loach had died, along with full-grown boesemanii and red rainbows, plus a few odds and ends. After checking clocks around the house it seems that the power went off just after midnight (in a fierce heatwave.) Air pump stopped, filters stopped - and when the power came on at 11:00 in the morning, several more fish priomptly died. I suspect that this was due to toxins released from the filter, as the bacteria began to die. Oddly, the largest clowns survived, but still seem very subdued.

I don't really have any altenrnative power supplier, so I just have to bite my lip and put this down to experience. But I am pondering making up a battery operated "power off" warning. Not that I could have done very much apart from running tapwater into the tank.

Once things settle down, I can feel a visit to Emma coming on, to replenish my empty looking tank.

[Emma Turner]

So sorry to hear this, Brian.

We get lots of intermittent power cuts where we are (thankfully that don't usually last too long - touch wood), but a little while back we had one that lasted a bit longer and we were getting very concerned about the clown tank. Luckily all was ok that time, and we decided there and then we would buy a generator in case it happened again. This wasn't cheap, but we did get quite a good deal on it at Halfords. A few months ago, we had a major power cut that lasted several hours, and some of the fish, particularly the Puntius filamentosus, that have a very high oxygen requirement, began to suffer. We hooked the tank equipment up to the generator outside the house, and despite it being very noisy (tough luck, neighbours ) it really did save the day. Although we live less than a mile away from the shop, our electricity supply is on a different circuit and thankfully the shop was not affected.
Having said all that, it still doesn't help you if the power goes off in the middle of the night. I am one of these weird people that can only sleep with a fan or air conditioning unit making white noise in the background, and if that went off (during a power cut) I instantly wake up.

Emma

[mikev]

Very sorry to hear this.

The situation is not much better on this side of the Atlantic: there were power-outs in NY during the last heat wave that kept about 70,000 people w/o electricity for a few days! We had four powerouts this year (after fifteen years without outages), the longest about 6 hours. No ill effects on any fish, probably because the temperature also dropped to mid-60s, but during a heat wave this would have been a killer.

Emma is right, the only way to go is to invest in a generator, so I got one too and tested it yesterday--seems to produce enough juice for the tanks.... The main missing component now is a real-loud power-out alarm....

Some things that can be done if you don't have a generator are:
* Try to cool the tank as much as possible
* Bring the water level down a lot. Water close to the surface will have more O2 even without filtration.
* Try to ensure somehow that the filtering bacteria is not concentrated in the filter but is spread all over the tank. In my main loach tank this is the case: lots of artifical plants with bacterial colonies all over them.

[Bitey]

A car inverter with a long extension cord might work.

There are also battery-powered air pumps that turn on when the power goes out. Some lithium batteries or NiMH rechargeables that you recharge periodically would ensure that the pump is always ready.