Just thought I'd share with you guys my experience a couple of days ago, when I lost power for 21 hours.
Not a huge, long power cut but certainly enough to potentially mess up my tanks and fish.
Well...... anyway, what I did to help my fish through it was firstly to put on my gas fire in the room to try and keep the tanks from cooling down too quickly. I also boiled water in a saucepan on my gas hob, and added to the tanks periodically .... I literally tippped the boiling water straight into the tanks, avoiding the fish inside. Outside temp here goes down to below zero at night and is about 8 celcius in the day, so I definately appreciated still having gas to be able to keep things warm. I managed to keep both tanks above 22 celcius so that was fine, although obviously not ideal.
As for the filters (all external canister filters), I took out all the bio-media from inside and literally just put it in the tank water, in its baskets/bags. I then made sure that there was at least some water flow around things by swirling the water around the tank every so often with my arm.
My 3 FH's actually thought the whole thing was rather fun, and water testing once the power came back on showed that water stats were still really good, and what I had done seemed to have worked a treat.
Oh, I also obviously stopped feeding for that time too, to reduce load on the biofiltration.
So, for me and my FH's, that's how we got through it. Not without stress (on my part).
Anyone else any power outtage stories, and how you got through it with your tanks ?
Not a huge, long power cut but certainly enough to potentially mess up my tanks and fish.
Well...... anyway, what I did to help my fish through it was firstly to put on my gas fire in the room to try and keep the tanks from cooling down too quickly. I also boiled water in a saucepan on my gas hob, and added to the tanks periodically .... I literally tippped the boiling water straight into the tanks, avoiding the fish inside. Outside temp here goes down to below zero at night and is about 8 celcius in the day, so I definately appreciated still having gas to be able to keep things warm. I managed to keep both tanks above 22 celcius so that was fine, although obviously not ideal.
As for the filters (all external canister filters), I took out all the bio-media from inside and literally just put it in the tank water, in its baskets/bags. I then made sure that there was at least some water flow around things by swirling the water around the tank every so often with my arm.
My 3 FH's actually thought the whole thing was rather fun, and water testing once the power came back on showed that water stats were still really good, and what I had done seemed to have worked a treat.
Oh, I also obviously stopped feeding for that time too, to reduce load on the biofiltration.
So, for me and my FH's, that's how we got through it. Not without stress (on my part).
Anyone else any power outtage stories, and how you got through it with your tanks ?
