HELP............. A.S.A.P

Andrew from the forum has a power cut in his area.Power is down since 19.00 and might be back at 2am.Any and all help on how to keep tanks warm.He also has fry as some of you might have seen on one of his posts.

if he has a gas cooker i would suggest putting hot water in a plastic bottle and placing this in the tank i would also if possible wrap the tank to keep heat in stir the water to keep movement this will add oxygen or if by chance oxygen tablets.

mickey

Tinfoil wrapped around tank or a nice thick duvet has worked for me in the past up to 16 hours without power.

Ive gone with the duvet option before also. Cover the whole tank,if there is holes in the hood just make sure they are covered also with the duvet. Keep the heat it. If you have gas heating or anything turn on the heat in the house (but your probably dependant on the stove firing up for that anyhow and with no esb well catch 22).
Keep doors closed and all that. It should be fine for the space of time,let it warm back up to temp naturally when the esb comes back on. Dont force it up higher or anything.
The bacteria in the filter are more at risk than the fish for the space of time you are talking about.Without oxygen some of the beneficial bacteria may die off.

Gavin

Remove the media from the filter a put it in a bucket with some tank water. If you have a battery operated air pump aerate the media to keep oxygen going to the bacteria to keep the filter alive.
You can also split the airline to keep the tank aerated as well.
If you don't have a battery operated air pump then place the media in a bucket stirring the water every hour or so to get oxygen to the bacteria. You will also need to disturb the surface of he tank water so the fish can also get some oxygen.
Monitor the temperature of the tank. If it starts to cool you can use a plastic bottle with hot water from the storage tank. The storage tank will keep the water hot for many hours. If you have a gas stove you can heat water on this.
Another way is to use hand heating pads available at camping shops. These should be placed in side a zip bag.
Wrap the aquarium in towels or blankets. especially the top were there will be most heat lost.
When the power comes back on place the filter media back in the filter. Don't clean it beforehand because you may wash away some of the bacteria that is still alive.
Don't feed the fish for a day or two and monitor the water quality. Perform water changes if needed.

I've had this problem many many times in the past.

As is already posted the biggest risk here is to the bacteria in your biological filter. Keeping the tank heated can be achieved by hot water in a plastic bottle, wrap the tank in a duvet or even better get some thick insulation aeroboard (any DIY shop) and make a tight fitting 'coffin' for your tank with a top & four sides that just fits over the tank. This will keep the tank warm for a long time.

Regarding the filter; if any of your neighbours have power then you could transport the filter and some aquarium water in a large bucket and just run the filter in your neighbours home until power is restored.

However another solution exists to the whole problem..... The power invertor.
A power invertor is a piece (inexpensive at about €40) of electronic equipment that you can connect to your cars 12V outlet and on the other end you plug in any low power electrical device with a nornal 3-pin plug. I use one in my car to charge my mobile phone & laptop using the normal adapters that come with them. In this case just run an electrical extension cable from your car to your tank and plug in your filter & heater. If your heater is a larger one i'd recommend using a smaller 75w/100w heater just until the power is restored. I've done this before and it works beautifully but only had need to use it for a short spell; not sure how long you'd get before your car battery went flat in a longer power outage. Guess you'd have to check with the power invertor manufacturer to see. You could allways temporarily disconnect the invertor and take the car for a spin to re-charge the battery then reconnect when you get home. In any case it's a great solution to an all-to-common problem.

Tm2204 that is a great solution but living in a small apt block with the car park a hundred feet away this would be impossible for me to do!!

I think I am going to invest in some aeroboard and make a coffin. Is this stuff expensive and how tough is the material?

Hi Nonie,

No it's not expensive at all and you only need a few sheets. It's the stuff they use to insulate between the cavities in brick walls of houses. Get the thickest you can get and just tape it together after you measure & cut the pieces. When you have it all stuck together it's fairly robust and does the job excellently.

Just don't forget about your filter. If the filter is 'movable' then follow my previous suggestion or that or Platty252. If it's fixed internally (ala Juwel) then just remove the sponges & make sure they get oxygen.

This is EXTREMELY important as failing to do this puts you back into 'cycle' mode with your setup once power is restored.

By the way does anybody know how long you have before the bacteria die off on your filter media?

Thanks,
Tom.

I would imagine it will start dying off after 6 hours or so? I might be wrong?
Also if you add oxygen tablets,how long would they do,would it be best to place them under the sponge filter as they are quite small tablets.

Gavin

Hi tom thanks for the reply. I think I will invest in some as comming into the Winter there is know to be power cuts in my area!!

how long you have before the bacteria die off on your filter media - this varies from tank to tank, depending on size of the tank and the filter in question.

I did have a friend whose power went for about 9 hrs and everything was fine when the power came back.

Luckily most power cuts are only for 1-2 hours so the filter bacteria should be fine and if you keep the tank warm everything should be fine.

The power invertor really comes into it's own here as you can just plug it in and everything runs as normal.

We did, however, have a power cut at my home in Wicklow last year for 24 hours+ Some clown crashed a car into an ESB pole early on a Sunday morning. Luckily I wasn't keeping fish then but i'd have just moved my filter to a neighbours house and kept the tank warm depending on how long I got out of the car's battery the invertor gets plugged into.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions. Luckily the power was restored at 11.30 pm so we were only without power for 4 hours. The tanks were well wrapped in blankets, kids duvets, puffa jackets, you name it I pulled it from the wardrobes and put it to some use.

I monitored the tank temperatures and all the fish seem fine. The fry I wil need to keep a closer eye on, and now that they are 2 week sold I'll post a new video to the Betta thread.

Some great advices here from all concerned, maybe I could compile it and create an entry to to the article competition. Valerie who owns the IPR to the thread replies

Either way this thread provides a useful pointer for anyone who suffers the now all too common power outage.

Andrew

Many thanks to Orca for starting this off in my hour of need. Ironically we had another outage today but only for 30 minutes, so I hope all upgrade works are completed soon.
Andrew

There 2 competely organic:laugh: solutions to keep O2 levels high, quirt hydrogen perox (dumb blond stuff) www.theaquariumwiki.com/Hydrogen_peroxide into the tank or add sodium porborate (gold fish O2 tablets) 216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:urB0xVK61P...n&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=uk . Both are competely oganic if you wont to buy some off me post a cheque to P.O box 943 South Africa:laugh:

@ Andrew !

This is a great idea for an article for the competition !!!!

Get writing ... you got till the 1st of November !!!! and you have a long weekend at hand

Valerie

Was in Argos today and spotted that they are selling 350Watt power inverters for a mere €38; well capable of running your filter & heater (and probably your lights too!). If I didn't already have one i'd have snapped one up.

Had a power cut for just under 2 hours yesterday.

Ran my extension lead out to the invertor in my car, plugged it into the cigarette lighter socket in the car, went back inside and plugged both my filters and my heater into the extension lead and it worked flawlessly.

An absolute godsend. Didn't have to worry about heat loss, filter bacteria, nothing....

Wow tm2204, having the power inverter was perfect timing for you, I guess autumn and winter really are the times when a power otage are most likely to occur when the network could reach critical mass. Something like tihs may need to become an essential piece of kit for all fiskeepers
Perhaps our LFS should look into this.
Andrew

Hi - I have seen power inverters in my local Aldi at the weekend. I think they were on offer a few months ago. Though they are quite small (300W), they probably could power a small tank's pump and heater. Maplins would be another obvious place to look. They regularly have them on 'special offer'.
These are dead handy - we have one in the main car and it's incredible how often we've used it (phone charger, computer, camera...).
Valerie

Hi Valerie,

Did you ever think to use it when you had a power outage to keep your tank running though?

Idea only occurred to me recently and I have had one for years.

The 350W one on sale in Argos would easily power your filter(s) and heater. Possibly your lights too.

Yes, the thought had come across my mind last year. We are lucky though, we have very few power cuts and generally, they are quite short... May it last

Valerie

Bump...given that its a wild wild day down here in West Cork. Just saw my neighbours fence go flying,along with the dustbin and anything else that was in their backyard!

So the lights have dimmed now a couple of times here and I reckon its going to be power off for a while today.
I dont have power invertors etc,nor generators.
So while Im happy to wrap to the tanks with blankets etc.. if the power goes off, I want to know how long before my tanks filter goes into shock.
The small internals filters wouldnt be much a problem,I could remove the sponge with some tank water and stir it every so often to keep aerated. I also have some oxygen tablets up stairs I think that I could drop into the bottom of the filter box.

However for an external filter, I mean the tetratec ex700's, bit bigger,do I just pop one into the bottom of that also ? Cant imagine it would last for long ?

Anyone have some ideas,Im just mindful of the lights dimming here!!


Gavin

Ps: If people use laptops,I would advise saving this thread on your laptop as the router will be down so u might not be able to connect,and at least you have advise on hand in the laptop if the power does goes out. Gosh Im getting ever so sensible in 2009!

Gavin

Did your power go?

LB

Hi LB,
No thankfully it was fine! Still given the weather at this time of the year think its best to be prepared.
Gavin

Hi.
What size is your tank heater. I tried to run a 300 watt heater & a 35watt filter/pump off a Black & Decker 400watt power inverter but the inverter cut out.
Regards.
Tony.

Im running a 125 watt heater. the filter I have is 13 watt re Tetratec ex 700.