11 hr power outage at our house

[jferrier]

Sorry for everyones losses. We had 30 hours without power and I ran a generator with a battery/inverter backup in case of running out of gas. All fish/corals made it but was a pain as they are in separate qt's. Had lots of heaters but had to let one empty liverock tank go and lost a bunch of little tiny starfish. 

[Manny Tavan]

3 hours ago, Webbed Feet said:

Glad you have what for a setup?  Lacking any details as to how that was done electrically, doing what you described is very dangerous.  I hope you just overlooked letting us know a few very important details about what all goes into hooking up to your home that way.  I am very glad no life was lost, and I am including your reef pets!

  https://landmarktools.com/blogs/guides/how-to-connect-a-generator-to-your-home-without-a-transfer-switch

You’re right. No one should do what I do without knowing what to do and how to do it safely. 

[Krux]

WHY ME!?!??!

[Lexinverts]

28 minutes ago, Krux said:

WHY ME!?!??!

Oh no. Again?

[obrien.david.j]

12 hours ago, Krux said:

WHY ME!?!??!

Wind was back last night at our house.   Power outages reported around us, withing 1-2mile radius... but ours stayed on.   

Lost two more big fir trees, but it was expected.  They were holding up half the weight of two other big fir trees that had fallen.   They're now resting on the neighbors roof.     We have a row of smallish cedar trees.   I expect to lose 2-3 of them.   The ground has heaved, roots visible, and the wind was bending them over 40%-ish.  Will they need to come out, or just learn to continue growing - but at an angle.   Waiting for clear morning light to assess what the world really looks like.

Sorry to hear you're out again.

[talkalot82]

On 1/16/2024 at 1:42 PM, Deuce00 said:

Yes I got some power yesterday evening and then it’s been off and on today. Im out in thurston. I have a generator and my 60g up and running. If you need anything let me know. I’ve noticed my mushroom corals don’t like the cold and all my clownfish died. 

I wish I had known at the time. I could have housed your fish. I have breader boxes

[Emerald525]

On 1/19/2024 at 7:08 AM, obrien.david.j said:

Wind was back last night at our house.   Power outages reported around us, withing 1-2mile radius... but ours stayed on.   

Lost two more big fir trees, but it was expected.  They were holding up half the weight of two other big fir trees that had fallen.   They're now resting on the neighbors roof.     We have a row of smallish cedar trees.   I expect to lose 2-3 of them.   The ground has heaved, roots visible, and the wind was bending them over 40%-ish.  Will they need to come out, or just learn to continue growing - but at an angle.   Waiting for clear morning light to assess what the world really looks like.

Sorry to hear you're out again.

You had such a nice backyard with all the trees glad they didn’t go through the roof. Thursday night the freezing rain and wind came and there were power lines down trees down and roads closed. 
 

Power went out again Thursday night at 11:30 pm and Sirena and I were up all night trying to keep the old generator going. 
 

Luckily for us Amazon must have put high priority on cold weather items because they delivered the new generator in 24 hours 2 days before. We just didn’t have gas or propane to run it.  We chained up yesterday morning and the side roads were bad.  People with no chains were sliding backwards. This one woman was frozen in fear halfway up the hill and in the middle of the roads we needed to pass . I told her to just to reverse but she wouldn’t listen. She wanted me to drive her car for her and I thought about it but :

1. I’m not an expert in driving in winter weather 

2. I had spikes on my shoes 

3. Sirena was braking down a hill trying to get around the person and I just needed her to move immediately which she finally we did

Shout Out to the Happy Valley Fred Meyer on Sunnyside . They had gas cans out and we got extra gas and they helped pump it for us.  I bought propane but the night crew took the key for the propane container.  As I was in the store trying to find wood pellets and getting some space heaters and a bottle of wine for Sirena , they found me and said they found the key. Nice group there always helpful!

New Lesson: propane is great and cleaner and easier to install and one standard container lasts about 3 1/2 hours BUT it can freeze and stop working in severe cold so glad I got a dual fuel generator and we switched to gas.

 

Tip for you all: 

1. Heaters  don’t do well with temperature swings . I added another heater to my tank and watched it and sure enough started smoking and I removed it immediately. 
2. Have a bigger heater than you need if you don’t have gas heating. Even with a backup heater that  I keep in the tank I couldn’t raise the temp above 71. 
3. I have a 90 gallon tank and 2 200 watt heaters and I only have to run one usually because the fish room is plenty warm.  I ran 2 and that wasn’t enough so added a 300 watt that I have for such emergencies. 
4. I would suggest buying new heaters when an event like this happens. I also buy new heaters if I break down a tank. I have 2 new ones on the way.

5. Space heaters draw a significant amount of power for their size. Never plug them into an extension cord.  I also wouldn’t suggest plugging 2 in the same outlet . We blew a circuit once in doing that. 
 

 

 

[Manny Tavan]

You’re not using the generator to power your home gas furnace? During the outage I set my furnace to 72 to get some heat in the house. The tank heaters don’t have to do that much work after that. It’s a lot easier for the generator to power a 300 watt furnace blower than several 200-300 watt tank heaters 

[Deuce00]

On 1/20/2024 at 5:00 AM, talkalot82 said:

I wish I had known at the time. I could have housed your fish. I have breader boxes

Lesson learned. My tank got down to 60 degrees in 24 hours. Lost 8 of 12 fish and most my coral besides a Duncan. The sea urchins lost all their spikes but are alive. 

[obrien.david.j]

9 minutes ago, Deuce00 said:

Lesson learned. My tank got down to 60 degrees in 24 hours. Lost 8 of 12 fish and most my coral besides a Duncan. The sea urchins lost all their spikes but are alive. 

Your tank got cold, but did you have circulation in the tank?

#1 thing a tank needs is Oxygen, and gas exchange.  That happens at the air-water interface at the top of your tank.   The simplest way to enable this, is Circulation.   battery powered air pump... is just circulating the water.   Smallest of small pump, on backup power... circulates the water.   With my the MP10/40/60 backup 12v supply situation, all power heads drop to something like 20% (or 10%?) and just run low and slow, for as long as possible. ... circulation.

Temp on the other hand, CAN do bad things.  But I wouldn't have expected that much of a fish loss from 20 degrees down.   That's what my tank did, with zero fish loss.

Sorry to hear about your losses.  Heartbreaking.

[Emerald525]

17 minutes ago, obrien.david.j said:

Your tank got cold, but did you have circulation in the tank?

#1 thing a tank needs is Oxygen, and gas exchange.  That happens at the air-water interface at the top of your tank.   The simplest way to enable this, is Circulation.   battery powered air pump... is just circulating the water.   Smallest of small pump, on backup power... circulates the water.   With my the MP10/40/60 backup 12v supply situation, all power heads drop to something like 20% (or 10%?) and just run low and slow, for as long as possible. ... circulation.

Temp on the other hand, CAN do bad things.  But I wouldn't have expected that much of a fish loss from 20 degrees down.   That's what my tank did, with zero fish loss.

Sorry to hear about your losses.  Heartbreaking.

I didn’t have any circulation going for 14 hours while the generator was down and the only coral that died was the one acro and one frag of zoas and a baby jawbreaker .   I had a theory that just like in humans oxygen needs would be significantly reduced. People who drown in extreme cold water have a better chance of brain survival. Newborns who have been without oxygen and have brain injury get hypothermic treatment to lessen the brain injury. I also have a rectangular tank versus cube for better gas exchange. 

[Deuce00]

34 minutes ago, obrien.david.j said:

Your tank got cold, but did you have circulation in the tank?

#1 thing a tank needs is Oxygen, and gas exchange.  That happens at the air-water interface at the top of your tank.   The simplest way to enable this, is Circulation.   battery powered air pump... is just circulating the water.   Smallest of small pump, on backup power... circulates the water.   With my the MP10/40/60 backup 12v supply situation, all power heads drop to something like 20% (or 10%?) and just run low and slow, for as long as possible. ... circulation.

Temp on the other hand, CAN do bad things.  But I wouldn't have expected that much of a fish loss from 20 degrees down.   That's what my tank did, with zero fish loss.

Sorry to hear about your losses.  Heartbreaking.

The odd thing was most my favorite fish lived besides the clowns. Lost 3 Chromis 3 pajama cardinal all 5 years old. 2 clowns and a random goby I had in a 10g. So 9 total. I had an air stone with a battery bubbler going mostly the whole time, the cobalt aquatics one.  The fish that lived were an Orchid Dotty, Coral Beauty, yellow Coris, and my new Midas blenny just got from cuttlefish. The aptasia survived in the cold, go figure. The cold water destroyed my mushrooms and made the tank go cloudy pretty quickly. I found out quick that most my heaters were trash, so I’ll be getting a few new Eheims. Now just need to go back up to Portland and goto cuttlefish and get a few new things here eventually. 

[Emerald525]

5 hours ago, Deuce00 said:

The odd thing was most my favorite fish lived besides the clowns. Lost 3 Chromis 3 pajama cardinal all 5 years old. 2 clowns and a random goby I had in a 10g. So 9 total. I had an air stone with a battery bubbler going mostly the whole time, the cobalt aquatics one.  The fish that lived were an Orchid Dotty, Coral Beauty, yellow Coris, and my new Midas blenny just got from cuttlefish. The aptasia survived in the cold, go figure. The cold water destroyed my mushrooms and made the tank go cloudy pretty quickly. I found out quick that most my heaters were trash, so I’ll be getting a few new Eheims. Now just need to go back up to Portland and goto cuttlefish and get a few new things here eventually. 

Sorry for the loss but glad you’re moving forward and staying in. My tank stayed clear so my guess is the loss of the coral and fish caused an ammonia spike that added insult to injury. I was afraid of that with my tank. I thought the puffer was dead because he wasn’t moving and was considering disposing of him and then his eye moved as if he knew .

[Deuce00]

53 minutes ago, Emerald525 said:

Sorry for the loss but glad you’re moving forward and staying in. My tank stayed clear so my guess is the loss of the coral and fish caused an ammonia spike that added insult to injury. I was afraid of that with my tank. I thought the puffer was dead because he wasn’t moving and was considering disposing of him and then his eye moved as if he knew .

Thanks been at it for about 15 years now. I did break down the 10G AIO water box for now. I do believe an ammonia spike for sure. I changed out quite a bit of water afterwards. My tank bigger tank is the Redsea  E260. 

[Brittany]

On 1/15/2024 at 12:45 PM, Eatfrenchfries said:

Hope everyone is doing well and they are keeping their tanks warm. 

 

 

Power came back on for me after 52 hours.

 

Bad

- Complete loss of life in all tanks (240g total). 

- Halted all pod production. Unknown if total loss. With my luck it'll just be Tigriopus and rotifers alive.

- breeding projects....gone

- bacteria culture projects..... gone

 

Good

- saved all of the phytoplankton in my collection. Shaken on the hour every hour. 

- only thing to survive the tank wipes was Sargassum (prefers cooler temps)

- mangroves are fine

 

Ran a Ecoflow delta, Yeti 1500x, and hooked up a marine battery. Managed to keep power up for close to 40 hours. After that I was charging power cells st work to take home. 

But in the end it was not enough. I staggered what I could, went manual where I could. The hardest part was keeping the heat up in my apartment. 

 

Next time I'll get a place with wood burning capability or allow gas/propane generator. 

 

Maybe I just had too many things to take care of. The big glass sliding door facing a frozen creek didn't help either, terrible insulation.

Regardless, it was definitely a learning experience for me. 

 

Not sure where to go from here. Stepping away is not likely. Though my heart is definitely not in it right now. 

I have another gonastrea for you.

[Brittany]

I feel lucky.  Lost power for 4 hrs and have battery backup for ~ 72 hours for circulation (echotech battery backup). 
 

I also have a small generator to keep heaters on.  It works well.  
 

Unfortunately I had a pump issue/overflow that led to salinity falling to 1.022.    I corrected it over 12 hours (fast down so fast up).   My dosers kept dosing and my corals weren’t growing so my alk went to 12.5 over the following 3 days…. I normally check alkalinity daily, but with power outages, freezing rain, pump failure, and fixing salinity I just didn’t check alk.  My alk is normally so stable I wasn’t worried…. But alk spike and salinity drop is what stressed things out.

 

(things being me, corals and fish are fine)
 

 

its funny how one problem often leads to another.

[obrien.david.j]

20 hours ago, Brittany said:

Unfortunately I had a pump issue/overflow that led to salinity falling to 1.022.    I corrected it over 12 hours (fast down so fast up).   My dosers kept dosing and my corals weren’t growing so my alk went to 12.5 over the following 3 days…. I normally check alkalinity daily, but with power outages, freezing rain, pump failure, and fixing salinity I just didn’t check alk.  My alk is normally so stable I wasn’t worried…. But alk spike and salinity drop is what stressed things out.

 

its funny how one problem often leads to another.

Thanks for the reminder.  Hadn't checked my salinity in a month, and it was High.   Just pulled some water out, and replaced with straight RO water.   Will check again tomrrow.