TwoFish
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
I have three tanks:
A Ten gallon planted guppy & black phantom tetras, A five gallon planted with endlers, and a fourty-six gallon bow-front community tank. All parameters are normal, all fish healthy. The 46 gallon is a little overstocked, but I'm religious about keeping an eye on my water parameters and performing PWC when needed (it rarely is).
Last night a car accident took out our power for seven hours between midnight and seven a.m.. It's my first major power outage with tanks.
The two planted upstairs tanks were fine. But my 46 gallon was clearly stressed and I've already lost one cory cat and one female threadfin rainbow fish as a result. Both the cory and the rainbow fish had distended gills and were gasping on the bottom of the tank when I came down in the morning, the other fish were swarmed at the top of the tank (even my secretive rams), which leads me to believe that it was an oxygen issue that killed the two fish.
My questions are these:
One: If the 46 gallon tank had been planted would the oxygen have not been as big a deal as it seems to have become during the power outage? The outage was overnight (Midnight-ish to seven in the morning), so I'm wondering if the plants in the upstairs tanks really made a difference, or if it's just that they are partially stocked tanks and so the fish couldn't have consumed all the oxygen in that amount of time.
Two: What can I do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Are people keeping their tanks on power backups? Is there some secret to keeping a tank healthy during a long power outage? Is it normal to lose fish after a long power outage?
Thanks for the help!
A Ten gallon planted guppy & black phantom tetras, A five gallon planted with endlers, and a fourty-six gallon bow-front community tank. All parameters are normal, all fish healthy. The 46 gallon is a little overstocked, but I'm religious about keeping an eye on my water parameters and performing PWC when needed (it rarely is).
Last night a car accident took out our power for seven hours between midnight and seven a.m.. It's my first major power outage with tanks.
The two planted upstairs tanks were fine. But my 46 gallon was clearly stressed and I've already lost one cory cat and one female threadfin rainbow fish as a result. Both the cory and the rainbow fish had distended gills and were gasping on the bottom of the tank when I came down in the morning, the other fish were swarmed at the top of the tank (even my secretive rams), which leads me to believe that it was an oxygen issue that killed the two fish.
My questions are these:
One: If the 46 gallon tank had been planted would the oxygen have not been as big a deal as it seems to have become during the power outage? The outage was overnight (Midnight-ish to seven in the morning), so I'm wondering if the plants in the upstairs tanks really made a difference, or if it's just that they are partially stocked tanks and so the fish couldn't have consumed all the oxygen in that amount of time.
Two: What can I do to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Are people keeping their tanks on power backups? Is there some secret to keeping a tank healthy during a long power outage? Is it normal to lose fish after a long power outage?
Thanks for the help!
