# What things must you do if there is a blackout?



## aritg3 (Feb 18, 2008)

Let's say you have a black out and the power goes out for many hours. What must you do with a fresh water cichlid tank to keep the water tempature at a reasonable level and the water clean (since the filter is no longer working)? I figure you cannot do a water change that effects too much of the tanks water or you will effect the biology. As for the tempature when you are doing your water change you don't want to put water that is abnormally too hot into the tank just to keep the overall water tempature up, right?

Thanks!


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## remarkosmoc (Oct 19, 2005)

Unless your room temp gets really cold as a result of the blackout your tank wouldn't likely cool too much to affect the fish for an outage of a few hours. Obviously keep the cover on the tank as much heat is lost to evaporation and you might even put blanket or some towels over the top.

Depending on what kind of filters you have I would unplug them and open them up so that the bacteria can at least have access to a little oxygen and when the power comes back on dump the water in them and replace tank water before firing them back up.

I would not put hot water in the tank unless the tank temp is getting really low and it is a last ditch effort to keep a little warmth in there. Once the power comes on the tank should be heated slowly (which will probably be the case unless your heater is way more powerful than necessary.)


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## edouthirt (Jan 22, 2008)

They also make battery powered air pumps which are good to have on hand in a case like this (i should probably take my own advice since I live in FL and Hurricane season is approaching).

Power goes out... do all of what tannable75 said... and throw an airstone in the tank with the battery powered air pump to keep some surface agitation in the tank... this will keep your fish from sufocating if the power stays off for an extended period.

Luckily here in FL... we rarely have to worry about temp issues... if anything I worry that my tank gets too hot! I almost never run my heater and the temp stays around 81 degrees.


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## lucrent (Dec 2, 2007)

Living in South Florida, I'm fairly use to black outs.

It has happened when i've been with out power for several hours and everything has been fine, I did not perform any water changes.

The sheer mass and volume of the water in the tank will mean that it does not change temperature very rapidly, and if your water quality is good before the blackout it will last that way for several hours.

Now if you are talking about a day then things can get tricky, you would need to do water changes if you have access to water at the right temperature.

Laurent


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## bentcountershaft (Nov 23, 2007)

If the temp does start to drop quite a bit you could fill a couple baggies with hot water, seal them up tight and let them float in the tank. Just keep an eye on your thermometers so you don't get it too hot. If it starts to rise more than you like you just pull them back out.


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## Derow69 (Nov 5, 2007)

How u going to get water if the power is out??????????????? your taps stop workign becasue the pump needs power to work :O


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## remarkosmoc (Oct 19, 2005)

Derow69 said:


> How u going to get water if the power is out??????????????? your taps stop workign becasue the pump needs power to work :O


If you aren't on municipal water yes. On municipal water the water is pumped to the water storage towers which have quite a bit of supply. Power would have to be out for a long long time before that supply is drained. Beyond that many pumping stations are gas powered pumps with backup generators to run the controls.


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## Ispintechno (Mar 27, 2008)

Yeah, personally a power outage has never stopped my water, hot water or telephone from working. 
I used to use a USB battery backup designed for office computers with my filters plugged into that. When the power went out it would beep annoyingly but the filters stayed on. The battery went south since then however and I have yet to replace it. We rarely seem to have any power outages here.


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## rwolff (Mar 13, 2007)

ehh, for several hours not much can happen, for a day even, or few of 2 days, unless u have lots of fish or very big fish, and + wd still feed them during this time...

but even so, my main concern would be sufficient oxygen...and that battery airpump is a very good idea...and water changes to mantain levels as was mentioned, but that is if poweroutage is extended ridiculously long.


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## lucrent (Dec 2, 2007)

If you have a lot of fish and quite a bit invested in them, and black outs are a real concern you might want to look into one of those Honda enverter genterators. There expensive, but silent, just make sure you get that to power the fridge too otherwise your wife will kick you out!

It's one of those better safe than sorry things, during Wilma, I was without power for four days, if I had the setup I have now it would have been tragic.

However in agreement with rwolff I left for Disney on a friday night and came back on a sunday night, once I got back I notice that I left the filters OFF! Talk about a dumb move, the water was a little cloudy but everyone survived.


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## ME_AND_GREENTERROR (Jan 21, 2008)

Well since i live in South Florida there are quick outages.. So i bought a UPS farely cheap, they run around 30 dollars that can hold for like 30 minutes


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## SOLOSHOOTER (Jan 26, 2007)

My first suggestion would be to purchase a portable generator. That way you can also provide power to some of your house.

Another idea would be to purchase a power inverter that will handle the wattage your tank or tanks need. Then run these off of your car battery. Needless to say you will need to run the car every once in a while to keep the battery charged.

Just a side note, I have a inverter in our Boy Scout trailer to run a scouts breathing treatment machine. He used it each night for about 15 minutes and it didn't effect the trailer battery at all after 6 days in use without it being charged.


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