All Gone :(

[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 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?