Loaches Online Forum

Tragedy!

A couple of mornings ago I woke to find the power off, and that half of my clown loach had died, along with full-grown boesemanii and red rainbows, plus a few odds and ends. After checking clocks around the house it seems that the power went off just after midnight (in a fierce heatwave.) Air pump stopped, filters stopped - and when the power came on at 11:00 in the morning, several more fish priomptly died. I suspect that this was due to toxins released from the filter, as the bacteria began to die. Oddly, the largest clowns survived, but still seem very subdued.

I don't really have any altenrnative power supplier, so I just have to bite my lip and put this down to experience. But I am pondering making up a battery operated "power off" warning. Not that I could have done very much apart from running tapwater into the tank.

Once things settle down, I can feel a visit to Emma coming on, to replenish my empty looking tank.

So sorry to hear this, Brian.

We get lots of intermittent power cuts where we are (thankfully that don't usually last too long - touch wood), but a little while back we had one that lasted a bit longer and we were getting very concerned about the clown tank. Luckily all was ok that time, and we decided there and then we would buy a generator in case it happened again. This wasn't cheap, but we did get quite a good deal on it at Halfords. A few months ago, we had a major power cut that lasted several hours, and some of the fish, particularly the Puntius filamentosus, that have a very high oxygen requirement, began to suffer. We hooked the tank equipment up to the generator outside the house, and despite it being very noisy (tough luck, neighbours ) it really did save the day. Although we live less than a mile away from the shop, our electricity supply is on a different circuit and thankfully the shop was not affected.
Having said all that, it still doesn't help you if the power goes off in the middle of the night. I am one of these weird people that can only sleep with a fan or air conditioning unit making white noise in the background, and if that went off (during a power cut) I instantly wake up.

Emma

Very sorry to hear this.

The situation is not much better on this side of the Atlantic: there were power-outs in NY during the last heat wave that kept about 70,000 people w/o electricity for a few days! We had four powerouts this year (after fifteen years without outages), the longest about 6 hours. No ill effects on any fish, probably because the temperature also dropped to mid-60s, but during a heat wave this would have been a killer.

Emma is right, the only way to go is to invest in a generator, so I got one too and tested it yesterday--seems to produce enough juice for the tanks.... The main missing component now is a real-loud power-out alarm....

Some things that can be done if you don't have a generator are:
* Try to cool the tank as much as possible
* Bring the water level down a lot. Water close to the surface will have more O2 even without filtration.
* Try to ensure somehow that the filtering bacteria is not concentrated in the filter but is spread all over the tank. In my main loach tank this is the case: lots of artifical plants with bacterial colonies all over them.

A car inverter with a long extension cord might work.

There are also battery-powered air pumps that turn on when the power goes out. Some lithium batteries or NiMH rechargeables that you recharge periodically would ensure that the pump is always ready.