Find out how many volts your heater is, and go buy the same voltage battery, snip the ac plug off, strip the positive and negative wire and properly connect, may not run for more then a few hours, but Atleast you can buy a bunch, for instance they have car, lawn mower etc batteries that are big, and matching the voltage would last ahwile, JUST MAKE SURE THE VOLTAGE DOESN'T EXCEED THE HEATER VOLTAGE.
Also even if its .5-2 volts less then the heater it will still help! My best advice, I'm always fiddling with wiring, lites etc. I make my own car chargers and stuff it has always worked, I ran an airpump on a 9volt battery for a couple hours last year when some moron crashed into my neighborhood transformer.
Keep hearing everyone saying "go buy a generator"...well our fellow MFK members out there not going to find any at the store...I just had I guy from NJ hav me ship a $500 generator overnight from here in WI. He paid $350 for overnite shipping two days ago. Their best hope is using what me n F1 VET suggesting, higher powered batteries, and inverting the DC voltage to 120v AC
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If you do the warm stones, only WARM them. Don't get them really hot. It will greatly reduce the odds of the rock breaking. Clean bricks are probably your best choice, but don't get them blackened by the fire.
In a power outage, the most critical element to keep the fish alive is to provide sufficient aeration. Maintaining warm temperature is only secondary as long as the temperature doesn't drop before 60F. Most tropical fish can withstand low temperature for several days without long term ill effect. In fact, lower temperatrue increases oxygen holding capacity of water and reduces metaboic waste generation thereby slowing down water quality degradation.
Before electric heater was invented, fish tanks were warmed by lighting candle or keraosine burner in a glass jar submerged in water. You can do the same thing by floating a glass jar in water and light a candle inside.
Also if you have an electric drill that has some battery left, take a wooden kitchen spoon or something like that, submerge the spoon in tank and let that baby blast, doing this every few hours for a couple minutes would have to help oxygen and agitation.
when my power goes out, i throw airstones or powerheads in each tank and forget about the heaters. i live in mn and the tanks get pretty cool. my little 1000w generator isn't enough to heat all my tanks
Depending on what stock you have you would be surprised on how bad conditions they will live through. My heater broke on my African tank last spring while I was out of town and I think the tank was around 65-68 for almost 3 days, didn't lose a single fish.
If a stingray can survive a 4000-5000 mile trip in a box traveling over several degrees of temp changes and elevation based oxygen changes, just think about what a hardy fish can do.