10 hours power outage

[mrvincent]

Hi, the neibourg appartment block got on fire (Incendie majeur à Québec dans le quartier Limoilou - ZONE911 - Actualité et information du monde de l'urgence au Québec (Média collaboratif)) this night. Outside temperature was -5C°. I lost power due to this situation for 10 hours.

Room temperature dropped to 14C° and aquarium temperature dropped to 20C°. No powerheads were working...

This morning the clowns were not gasping at the surface, but had different behaviour in the dark. I was bad feeling about my powerless to heat it...

That's a 20g with 2 clowns and some corals... Do you think it done some damage ?

Power came back just before I go to work, but if this situation happen again, what's your solution for this ? (I mean, the cheapest solution). Total power needed for survival: 150W for heater and powerheads.

 

[alco1]

you could look into a UPS system.

 

[huma-huma]

+1 on the UPS. alot of hardware(or even automotive) stores sell DC inverters. some come with a decent sized battery and inverter all in one, or you can buy the inverter itself and then attach it to a battery. the nice thing with DC inverters are that once they drain the battery, you can charge them again from your vehicle, granted its not an instant charge and youll have to run the car while charging, but atleast youll have a semi-sustainable power source.
also the downside to a UPS, (atleast in my eyes) is that once they are drained, they can only be charged by plugging them into an outlet, of course, unless you had a dc inverter to charge them from a vehicle
so in theory, if you had a UPS, the power goes out, your UPS kicks in, once it dies, youll have to go to someones house (that has power) and charge it again......

 

[Sniperhank]

Your clowns were at the top trying to breathe. One of the biggest reasons for water circulation is to bring fresh oxygen into your system. If things are back up and running, your fish will more than likely be fine. In terms of coral, that can be hit or miss. I've had a handful of power outages. The most memorable was a 3 hour one I had 6 months into my most recent tank's life. I lost many SPS and LPS coral, even though I continued to stir the water with a wooden spoon I had in my kitchen. The heat was most likely what 'cooked' the tank around 90 degrees. The most important point here is that I kept the skeletons in the tank. Some LPS can later on try to save themselves and bud off small corals in a "last ditch" effort. The best known here are plate coral. In terms of SPS, I had a purple na na acro that was well dead...until I turned it around 6 months later to find a small chunk of tissue that had survived and had polyps out. It was a struggle to keep it going once algae had taken root in the rest of the skeleton, but that is a different topic.

 

[mrvincent]

I'll plan on buying a 150W+ power inverter that I will plug in my car. There usually 600-800 watts/hours in a normal car battery, so I'll have to start the car each 4 hours...

As you said, if I can find a really cheap UPS, then I'll go for this solution. Thanks guys for ideas.

And I was saying the fishs were NOT gasping at the surface, but they had special behaviour, I don't know how to describe, they were not acting like usually... I have very small bioload in my tank... some corals and two clowns...

But it stress me during the night if we don't have power... Sometime here the outside temperature drop below -30C°

 

[Sniperhank]

A small bioload will consume the oxygen in the water much slower, so that is in your current benefit. Just keep an eye on the corals since they can suffer from tissue resession, for lps and sps corals, if they dont have enough water flow.