All Gone :(

[cmpenney]

We left early Friday morning to head off to Chicago for a family wedding. Had a really good time while we were there. Went to a Cubs game Friday afternoon, one of the most fun weddings I've been to on Sat. We were in downtown Chicago which is just packed with bars and restaurants so lot's of time spent hanging out and drinking!

Unfortunately the storm that came through on Friday evening took out our power at home while we were gone. Seems a tree down the street fell and knocked down a pole. With all the other damage in the area we didn't get power back until Sunday afternoon. Needless to say I returned Sunday night to find that every single fish dead in my display tank! Also all the shrimp, urchins ( save may one ), snails are all gone. The tank is littered with the bodies of thousands of tiny little brittle stars. Most of my corals are still with me so far. Lost a couple acros and my pocilipora, bird's nest isn't looking good either and I'm sure many of the other corals are going to take some damage just from the decline in water quality. I did a water change and drained out as much water as possible from my system to make the water changes as effective as possible. Also will be leaving the lights on for the next day in the hopes that a small algae bloom will help to get the water quality back under control sooner rather than later.

I can't recall feeling my stomach drop like it did when I walked in the door and saw my Emperor Angel, my baby, floating on the top of the water. Probably going to be a couple days at least before I know the full extent of the damage and what was lost.... I've probably lost over $2K in fish, some of them that I've had for 8+ years.

[demonclownfish]

SO sorry to hear, whats with all the nice large tanks and power outages. first Mike, now you :(. do you plan on replacing your emperor? and 8+ years on some fish that has to SUCK!

[ReeferRob]

Oh man Chad, my stomach just dropped reading this. Sorry for your lose bro.

[jimsflies]

I hate weddings... now I have a good reason not to go.

Sorry to hear this. Storms seem to be taking their toll this season.

[cmpenney]

I tried to plan for this stuff as much as I could. I have a UPS that keeps my main pump running for about and hour and a generator but I need to get home to start it up and flip the breakers. In the past that system had worked fine. Never lost anything in an outage.

This time being out of town and being such a long outage there just wasn't anything I could do :(

[Mike]

I have an idea of how you felt bro... I am in the rebuild process my self. My entire tank was nuked by an outage a few weeks ago. The algea bloom is a great idea btw :)

[Manoj's Reef]

Sorry to hear that Chad, thats extremely hard to take.I hope your corals make it .

[cmpenney]

Short of pad mounted natural gas generator there isn't much more I could do. I am looking into putting together a DIY battery backup to run one of my vortech's. I have a couple decent size deep cycle batteries that I can use and should be able to get nearly a 48+ hour run time for one of my pumps which might have been enough to save them. Since my corals didn't go first I'm certain it was an Oxygen issue that did evertything in.

Thanks Mike, This is one of the few timers when Cyano and algae are going to be my friends. I have several mangroves, caulerpa, and seagrass downstair too that I'm keeping under 24 hr light for the next few days as well int he hope that they take up as much of the pollution as possible.

It's just totally gut wrenching though to loose all these fish and corals. I had finally gotten the point where I was growing Acros again and all that has been lost. I know some of my Caps look ok but the flower petal and a few encrusting monti's are really iffy right now.

It will probably be a week before things settle enough to be able to fully account for all the damage.

[CableGuy]

Sheesh.. that sucks man. Im sorry for your losses. Hopefully all of your coral can pull through.

[thefishgirl]

Chad.... really sorry to hear this. :( If there is anything I can do, let me know.

[MizTanks]

I'm sooo sorry for your loss (((hugs)))

[streetrodder007]

Sorry to hear about the loss.
Being an Electrician by trade, there are other alternatives. The one big problem is money for most people. You could always do a small photovoltaic panel with a 12v backup for water movement with a very low amp draw. A small wind turbine- we have only touched the small market on this ( still expensive ) . battery storage is one huge cost factor.
Another idea is- On a lot of our big commercial accounts, we usually end up working with Johnson Control or MCMI and putting in a "Sitemaster" computer. It basically monitors what's going on with your buildings and alerts you when something changes state, such as a power loss, generator starting, high coolant alarms, fire alarms, etc etc. The system texts your cell phone, pages you, and rings a bell at the computer, etc. I have just never put a small system in a residential house. But I am sure someone has to make something like this out there, that is not over priced. One inexpensive example would be- if you have a residential security system, when your power drops out and the security panel goes to battery back-up, have the security company call your cellphone to alert you. This could be had for $30 a month, with a $500 install. Have an electrician put a cheap CT on your primary feeders - hooked to a dry contact- power drops out- contacts close, coil energizes- sends signal to security panel using the 12 volt power from the panels battery backup. Design in a nutshell !
If you have detailed questions, just PM me or call me, I would be happy to give some advice if I could help.

[igot2gats]

Holy cow. Sorry for your loss. If I had a tank, I'd def donate to your cause.

Keep us posted on how things end up for you. Hopefully, the coral you have left are strong & make it.

[streetrodder007]

I don't mean to hijack your thread with my long postings, Just trying to shed a little hope for another build for you.

[cmpenney]

No, Good options, really. The computer stuff I'm not to much interested in. I really could do that now with a bit of work. In this case knowing about the outage would have done me little good.

The other options that create more of an automatic backup flow option to me is much more of and interesting idea to look into.

[Sir Patrick]

So sorry to hear this....gotta be hard to loose fish after so many years...

[cmpenney]

Some of those fish were about as much a pet as a fish can be. Especially my Emperor I'd had him for 8 years even before I got the 200.

The corals are pretty much gone, the only one I might be able to save some of is the orange cap at this point. Tomorrow I'm going to bypass the display and drain and clean the tank. Probably move the rock around a little bit. Then refill it and try to start over.

[pjr]

Unreeal. I am so sorry.

One of my friends on the board also had a power outage. He is out of town, and asked me to do a water change. He also lost all his fish. There's been a lot of this in the last 10 days. :( Mike started a thread on his rebuild; I think there's a few others as well.

I am trying to find a pattern in all this madness. Why only some tanks with the loss, often in a hsort period of time, while other tanks escape withlout loss?

- Is it larger tanks that suffered the most?
- Is it more impactful on tanks heavily stocked with fish?
- Is it tanks with deep sand beds that feel the effect of a power loss first?
- Would a battery powered backup (Vortech) have avoided such a catastrophe?

I don't know any of these answers.... just asking questions.

[cmpenney]

I'm certain that it is an oxygen issue as the corals where not initially affected. Corals can survive a good 24hrs in low oxygen situations, Fish can't. If it was temp a temp issue the corals would have gone first and in my case the corals started to go only after the dead animals in the tank had polluted the water.

Stocking levels play a large role in why it happens as does the size of the fish. Larger fish succumb much sooner than smaller ones do. But it can quickly snowball in a tank. One fish dies and starts to rot which means bacteria explode and consume more oxygen, so more fish die, etc, etc.

A battery backup might not have 100% stopped it from happening if the outage is long enough but I'm sure it would buy more time. If I had enough batteries to keep one of my vortechs running at 50% power the entire weekend it may have saved the tank or may have only meant they all started to die a couple hours later. There really is no way to tell and I'm not at all interested in experimenting to find out. I am planning to build a DIY battery backup to connect to one of my vortechs though. It certainly can't hurt!

[cmpenney]

Street,

Just put a couple of these together: Amazon.com: 5 Watt 12 Volt Solar Power Portable Panel PV Photovoltaic Good for: RV Car Truck… (http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Power-Portable-Panel-Photovoltaic/dp/B000OYGZ4C)

Would be enough to run and charge a backup battery for a vortech for a good length of time I would imagine.

[Mike]

PAt and Chad,

I think that larger fish play a big role in the time it takes to exhaust the o2 in a tank. The larger they arethe more o2 they require. The pattern for me seemed to be large fish down followed by the smaller ones until the only fish living was a clown that is barely 1.5 inches long. This is a hypothesis (I woke up to a dead mess) but I think the fact that the smallest fish in the tank is the only fish that lived gives some support.

[Hindered]

Wow that really sucks :(. My family lost our favorite fish to a power outage too. We were completely unprepared and most of the family wasn't even home. The big fish certainly take up the most oxygen and die alot faster. The nano fish I have didn't seem stressed at all in one tank, then I check the bigger fish upstairs and everything is dying :(. Again, sorry about your loss. I hope you can save what's left and best of luck with your rebuild.

[jimsflies]

Just put a couple of these together: Amazon.com: 5 Watt 12 Volt Solar Power Portable Panel PV Photovoltaic Good for: RV Car Truck

Would be enough to run and charge a backup battery for a vortech for a good length of time I would imagine.


Curious to see your DIY on that. I might be interested in doing something similar. Keep us posted.

[pjr]

The pattern you described seemed to be the same for Daniel's tank as well.

The backup DIY may hopefully be a great outcome for you and many of us.... thanks in advance for the insights.

I think back to the Great Power Outage and I didn't loose anything. Of course, I was lucky. I was home, and was able to put a battery-powered air pump on the tank, and also was able to take a gallon of water from the sump every hour and put in in the top of the tank to augment water flow. I also only had about 6 fish in a 100g setup.

[02REDZ28]

PAt and Chad,

I think that larger fish play a big role in the time it takes to exhaust the o2 in a tank. The larger they arethe more o2 they require. The pattern for me seemed to be large fish down followed by the smaller ones until the only fish living was a clown that is barely 1.5 inches long. This is a hypothesis (I woke up to a dead mess) but I think the fact that the smallest fish in the tank is the only fish that lived gives some support.


Big fish play a role but so do all the corals in your tank. If it is a heavily populated coral tank and the lights are off, every one of those is using lots of oxygen as well.

[softiegirl]

So sorry Chad! Its situations like these when we really see how fragile our little boxes of ocean are. I had an outtage of about 4 hrs and lost a seahorse and a pipefish. I felt HORRIBLE!! now i got the battery pump, and its still sitting in the box :duh::stupidme: Someone come over and kick me please.

[ReeferRob]

Chad, again sorry to hear of your loss. However, I am going to be tagging along on you DIY. This could be extremely helpful for me as my tank buts up against an external wall to the outside. So it would be very easy to mount a panel just like the one linked above, just outside the wall next to the tank to power or charge my BB for my VTs.

[streetrodder007]

CMPENNEY- that link that you had would be a great start, its very cheap and does give you a small amount of free power. A few of those paralleled together would help. Battery storage is one of our biggest problems when working on UPS systems. And trust me, we spend massive amounts of time and millions of dollars on back up energy systems at my contracts that I have. I just made a posting about UPS power on EMUREEFER's forum. maybe read that also.

[handlevandal]

My power was out from about 8pm on Friday until very late Saturday night. I had a couple of little portable power packs that I used to run the Vortech on the 75 for 20 minutes every hour, then moved it to the 29 nano and ran that for about 10 minutes. Every two hours I'd run one power pack over to a friend's house to get a bit more charge on it and bring the other one back to keep up the routine. The fish are fine, but I think I lost a few corals, a couple of sps frags are looking really sad, a few pieces from pjr may actually make it, and all the softies seem fine.

The worst part was when the power came back on and that was because I once again did something really really stupid. I had unplugged everything right after I unplugged the fridge and televisions etc and when I plugged it all back in I also plugged in a heater that I had replaced but hadn't removed. When I got it all plugged back into the timer strip I plugged it directly back into the wall instead of hustling up the GFC. I figured I'd look for that one once I got the nano back up and running, so I went into the other room to do that. Then I fed the fish in the nano and went back into the family room to feed the fish in the big tanks. Smelled something like burning plastic as I walked into the kitchen but didn't see anything there and then looked at the tank in the FR and saw smoke pouring out of the back of it. I pulled the power and then opened the front to the sump and flames came out. It appeared that something was on fire IN THE WATER so I grabbed a towel, wet it down a bit and threw it over the skimmer area where the flames were. It went out.

Once the smoke cleared away I saw the offending equipment. The thermostat for the old heater that I had not removed had fallen into the sump and I had accidentally plugged that back into the strip in a hurry, too much of a hurry. Not to mention if I had taken a few moments to locate the GFC this wouldn't have happened.

The fish were still swimming about although I'd have to believe they felt something, but I wasn't exactly in a hurry to reach into the sump, so I grabbed one of my 'poking sticks', wooden sticks with little wooden flaps glued to the end, and flipped the thermostat out of the sump and plugged the pump stuff into the GFC and everything turned on. I was lucky as there was no damage to the skimmer at all, it's working fine.

Oh yeah, and when the power kept going off and on before it went out completely it fried one of the ballasts from my halides, and it will have to be replaced. Sometimes I wonder why I do this.

[ReeferRob]

CMPENNEY- that link that you had would be a great start, its very cheap and does give you a small amount of free power. A few of those paralleled together would help. Battery storage is one of our biggest problems when working on UPS systems. And trust me, we spend massive amounts of time and millions of dollars on back up energy systems at my contracts that I have. I just made a posting about UPS power on EMUREEFER's forum. maybe read that also.

I know nothing about electricity, would the solar panel above be wired directly to a water pump or would it be wired to a battery?

[cmpenney]

If I had been home or even just at work things would have been fine. I do have a generator just have to get home to get it up and running. I've had outages where it took my almost 6 hrs til I could get home and get the generator running and not lost anything. 2 1/2 days was just too much though.


that link that you had would be a great start, its very cheap and does give you a small amount of free power. A few of those paralleled together would help. Battery storage is one of our biggest problems when working on UPS systems. And trust me, we spend massive amounts of time and millions of dollars on back up energy systems at my contracts that I have.

That's what I was thinking. Three of those in Parallel should be enough to keep a pair of deep cycles charged up for several days of run time to run at least one vortech at 50% power. Ebay seems to have several very reasonably priced options for charge controllers as well.


I know nothing about electricity, would the solar panel above be wired directly to a water pump or would it be wired to a battery?

RB, I probably already answered this above but the panels would be connected via a charge controller to batteries. The batterys would then power the pump. I'm planning to just use the 12v from the batteries directly to the 12v backup input on my vortech. However if you wanted you could use an inverter and upconvert to 120v and run almost anything that you wanted. Thinking now if you wanted that to fail over automatically you would have to do some more wiring though. Something would have to switch you to battery power, which could be a simple relay I guess but it would take more work and you wouldn't have as much run time.

[cmpenney]

It's probably going to be awhile before I can get started on putting the solar back system into place.

Money is a bit tight right now and I really won't have much of anything I need to protect for a couple months as I probably won't even put any fish back into the display until fall.