Help: no power!!

[Giniel]

Can anyone give me any suggestions as to how to keep my fish alive through an ice storm??

We have 10 degree weather and no power .Most of Bella vista is without power and not expected to have any on until Friday or saturday.

My tanks are already down to 78 degrees and dropping.

Thanks
Debbie

[t_j]

Where are your tanks at in your house??

[FishLover888]

wrap the tank with blanket. Boil some hot water and put in bags or plastic bottles and floating them in the tank. Have an air pump going (battery).

[GC_PAUL]

Debbie
Is your home all electric, if not and you have gas water heater with city water you could fill plastic liter bottles with hot water and float in your tanks

[t_j]

Or if you have a kerosine heater you can set that near the tanks and wrap your tanks with blankets and hot water bottles.

[Giniel]

Hi, I have an all electric house no other heat source. The tanks are mainly in the living room . I am going in a little while to get the battery operated pumps. No one here has any ideas of how to heat the tanks without electric. I already have blankets on them and when we leave to get our motel I am throwing all other blankets over them.I have 7 tanks up and going 1 of them is near a door. Can I savely move the fish in that tank to anothe rtank temporarily until power comes back on?? I know it will cause overcrowding in 1 tank but I really don't want to lose 40 fish...

thnaks
Debbie

[Graham]

Unless to you have a real good airstone in that tank you wouldn't want to move all the fish in there...it goes down so do all the fish.

Your best bet is to hook up a battery and an inverter to power the heaters and the air pumps, don't worry about the filters. The inverter will also run off the car battery.

The other thing is..... as the O2 levels drop in the filter boxes, or canisters the nitrifiers will start to die off.....drain the water off bio-media, and then just make sure it stays damp. This will ensure the bacteria will live.........you don't need cycling problems when everything comes back on line

[Giniel]

Where can I get an inverter and it just hooks up to a car battery?/
Debbie

[Greg Richardson]

Should have a connection to go into your cig lighter. Add up the wattage of what u need to run before buying one.
That way you buy one that is for your situation.
With that info call around to places like Hardware stores, Sears, Auto Stores.

[Graham]

Any good hardware store....even Wal-Mart carries them. They hook up to the car battery or any other deep charge battery.

The link will just give you an idea what I'm I'm takling about

http://www.voltageconverters.com/itemdesc.asp?CartId={E18DEB7F-F0EVERESTFC-4DFD-8214-0C23706D70C9}&ic=PW200-12

[Timbo]

agree with graham, inverter is the way to go. dont forget to start the car every hour or two to re-charge the battery!

[pcsb23]

Agree with Timbo and Graham, good luck.

[Giniel]

Won't have a car to stay at the house. we are trying to get a generator,but that isn't working either.....

I may end up just eating frozen fish...

I will keep you all updated..Thanks for the suport.

I am feeling a little hopeless right now...

Thanks
Debbie

[Dying for Discus]

good luck :( I'm sure whatever happens something good will come of it...

Could you ask a neighbor who might have a gas water heater and "borrow" hot water???

[dishpanhands]

Do you have a propane grill out side? If you do heat water in pans then put it in glass bottles and put them in the tank. A inverter over 400 watts can be a bit of $$.
HTH

[alpine]

maybe get a propane heater, buy some plasic so many mil thick and cover the tanks with the heat going in between so all the heat stays. Make sure you get ventilation in the room.
Best of luck, it must be a horrible situation,
roberto.

[Graham]

Thinking out loud here and I have never tried this....buy some heat packs, like what they put into shipping cartons or hand warmers..then tape them right onto the glass of the tank. Some are good for 7 to 8 hours and they maybe just enough to keep things above the ice cube stage.

G

[Greg Richardson]

If you can't be there go buy a deep charge boat battery.
Also a battery tester so you know when to re-charge it.
You looking at around $60.00 for battery about $6.00 for tester.

Then go buy an inverter that is reasonable cost.

Put all your fish in one tank.
Only power that tank.
Battery should last a long time that way.
Then come back to your house and check your battery after 12 hours. See where it's at.

If you have two cars you could pull a battery out of your other car and switch off batteries while one is getting charged.


For around $110.00 or so you should be able to pull this off.

[hazeldazel]

We have wonderful weather but a horrible power company, so I finally got an UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) used so you have enough time to shut down a computer. Since a filter uses waaay less than a computer, a $50 model had enough power storage to allow me to run the filters only for a couple days. Running a heater will eat the charge a LOT faster. You charge them up and then plug the items into the unit, it automatically works when the power goes out. If the other options are not available, try going to the local computer/office supply store and get an UPS. I'll keep my fingers crossed that you'll find enough ways to keep them warm enough and the water quality good enough that they'll make it until the power comes on.

Good luck!
Christine

[Elcid]

Hi Debbie:

Hope you are doing will. Did you find some way to heat the room with ur fishes? Anyway, don't feed the fish until the power is back up and syphon out any poop etc evey day. Be careful when you get power back and raise the temp back up slowly.

HTH,
Sandeep

[Chrisb]

Good luck
hope you get power soon
Chris

[Discus_KC]

Debbie,

I've got empty tanks if you want to get them to KC.

(816) 746-6845 Home

Jack

[brewmaster15]

Very nice Offer Jack!:):thumbsup:

-al

[AADiscus]

Giniel, I hope everything is OK with you. You are not that far from us. We have been lucky so far. All the towns around us are still without power. Make sure and send me a pm or email once you get back home and settled in.

[Giniel]

Thank you all so much for caring and all the helpful thoughts. I finally got a generator today. Got it up and running and all tanks hooked up. I am only running heaters and airstones and sponge filters. I have 4 tanks going on this generator.

They were without air or heat for 36 hours temperature was down past 64 .Some were swimming sideways and upside down. Temp in the house got down to 42 and still dropping. We are expecting more ice this sunday which we don't need.

Thank you Jack for the offer.If things get reaaly bad I may call you.

Thank you again and I will keep you updated.
Debbie

[brewmaster15]

Hang in there Debbie,
I'm glad you got a generator, I hope you don't need it soon, but its definetly piece of mind.

-al

[Greg Richardson]

Debbie. Even the smallest generator will have enough power to run any other filtration you have.

[Wahter]

They were without air or heat for 36 hours temperature was down past 64 .Some were swimming sideways and upside down. Temp in the house got down to 42 and still dropping. We are expecting more ice this sunday which we don't need.


My discus also became very sluggish when I was without power for a few days a couple of years ago (ice storm also), but all of them survived and the power came back on in about 3 days. The water also went down around 64ºF.

Hope yours make it too - healthy discus are surprisingly tough!


Walter

[Giniel]

Yeah!!!!!I have power back on . After 36+ hours of no heat and no oxygen all but 3 made it.....

2 of th8e 3 that died were sick before and in a quaranteen tank . They were weak from getting over what I think was hex. The other was one of the weaker in the 100 gallon tank.

Thay are really tough. More tough than I think most give them credit for.It is just amazing how they can do it!!

I have a couple of them that are taking their time to come around but are upright and breathing at the bottom of the tank.

As soon as my water tank heats up I am going to give them a nice water change and feed them tommorrow morning.

Thank you all once again for your suport through this trying time for me.
Debbie

[greyhoundfan]

Glad you got your power on. Bring the temps up gradually. I think a 20 degree jump would be pretty stark if you do it overnight.

[Timbo]

thats good to hear Debbie.

keep a close eye on them going forward for a week or two...sometimes things will show up a lil later after a low-temp exposure. you did a great job with them

[pcsb23]

Good news Debbie, glad it worked out ok.

[Greg Richardson]

Debbie. A suggestion.

Now that you have generator I'd organize for next outage.

This is first year for my fish room that is not in the house so with 6 outages so far this year it's been a learning experience. It's stressful when these happen especially at 2:00 in the morning so this makes things better.

What I have done is make it so that I can hook up my tanks in about 2 minutes.

Putting every tank on a strip cord with long cords so they can reach to middle area of the room when needed.

They use to be on strip cords but the cords were not long enough to take out from bottom of tank to extend to middle of the room.

This eliminates a lot of crawling underneath tanks to un-plug. Very fast now. It is a good feeling to know now I'm ready to go for the next one.

[dpt8]

Debbie, I remember you quite a while ago when you first got your pair of green turqs and raised some babies and I got a pair.. Glad to hear you had a somewhat positive outcome.. I was thinking about you. hoping all would be fine. David in Massachusetts

[Giniel]

Well I lost one of the babies from that pair last night .Her mate is fine ,as is the original pair.

Unfortunatly I am going to have to put more stress on them next week,I am moving. I am just hoping that the move doesn't stress them too much after what they have been through the last couple of days.

All the rest of them seem fine .They are all moving about and ate good this morning.

Next time I will be ready. I have a 5500 watt generator just in case we need it. The new house is heated with propane so at least I can keep the rooms warm too.

Thanks again for all your suport. And who would have thought discus are so stong when they have to be.

Debbie

[alpine]

Debbie, what an experience ! Glad it work out OK overall I guess. You will be fully prepared next time .

roberto.

[Don Trinko]

I have a 100 amp hour 12v battery and a 400 watt inverter. It will run several tanks for abought 8 hours. I also have one of the "D" cell air pumps and a LP heater that takes the 1 lbs. bottles. It is 4000 or 9000 BTU. I haven't had to use anything except the battery/inverter. I have used it several times. With power filters and 2 heaters it lasted abought 8 hours.
I do not have my Discus yet but when I do the inverter will run everythnig in that tank and I will use the propane to keep the room warm and air stoned and a small pump for the "non Discus" tanks. Don T.

[Giniel]

Well, I guess for the most part they made it ok. I am still watching for anything to sneak up due to the cold they went through.

While watching them last night guess what I saw????
My rose red laying eggs on one side of the 100 gallon tanks while the red melon laid on the other side of the same tank. In a 55 gallon tank I saw a turq laying eggs on a flower pot.. None of these fish have laid eggs in the year I have been here. The few that did ...didn't last (got eaten).

Now that I am moving and they went through a lot of cold they want to lay eggs...Is that good for them to do so soon after being soo cold for 36+ hours..

Thought I would up date on them.

Debbie

[hexed]

Debbie,
The cold water stimulates spawning. Being without power let your tank cool down enough to get it going and now that you have power the tank warmed back up and they started laying. Let them be so they can learn to protect the eggs. It can take quite a few times before they get it right. ;)