surviving an power outage

this is more of a story than asking questions. it all started out a normal day and a good one all my fish where happy and so was i . i just finished feeding them when my phone buzzed with the familiar sound of exspected load shedding ^^ .

not alarmed buy it i switched to battrey powered air pump not an issue.As eskom is bever rong about loadshedding the power did go off at the predetermined time and all was oky me and my dad decided to go grab a nice meal and when we arived back all was still dark . the power being off just over 3 and a half hours i looked ar the thermostat and to my suprice the them has droped and if it continues it will be in the danger zone marked out by my R13 rand thermostat.

so decided somethimg had to be done . boiled water added it to a bottle and droped the bottle into the tank this was a dodgy bottle so i held it in the water by hand . to my suprice the temp continued to drop even though i had most of the lid closed so i ran to the stove and same story agen ran back to the tank dropped the bottle in agen ... temp still not rising and i was aprochimg 4 hours mmmmmm .

get bigger bottle so i grab the bottle toss into the tank water splashing everywhere .making matters worse the bottle only contains it temp for about 10 mints

the temp didnt increase but it was stable at 23 and later increased to 24 droped all the way from 27 . cursing and swearing at eskom the power still not on and we are comming up on 6 hours .... got so frustrated started telling my dad we need to get a generator , hes more than keen on the idea aslong as i buy it ....

an upside was the plecos and upside down catfish kep commimg up and nibbling om my hands witch made the hole proces worth it .

so after 6:30 hours of no power me overwaring and most probably beeing more stressed out than the fish and countless prayers the power came back on and all is well the fish looks fine

sort and long of it all is i thing we over stress most of the situation and i working on the ferry that i didnt even realy make a big difrence to the water temp and was it all worth it sorry for the long read .

please share your thoughts

 

27 degrees - is this a must or a want or are you using your tank to heat the rest of the room - sjoe that is a very high temp to keep things at during load shredding.

Glad you had some funny doing it, but you might want to look at a different strategy ;-)

Later Ferdie

 

Were you boiling water on a gas stove? Heat is lost through all surfaces of the tank so you need to wrap the tank in blankets or polystyrene sheets.. Also, using a bottle of water to maintain temp in the tank, if you use a 1L bottle in a 100L tank, and that bottle is 50 degrees hotter than the tank (around 75 then), then looking at it really simplistically, the heat energy in that 1L of water can only add 0.5 degrees to the 100L of water, assuming that the 100L isn't losing any more heat at the same time (which it was, through the tank walls)..

 

+1 on what @RoGe said...I throw blankets over my tanks (more so during winter nights than load shedding...as it helps keep heat inside so heaters don't have to work so hard). Temp drops aint really a big concern I reckon...even in nature, temps drop during night and during thunderstorms as huge amount of cold water gets dumped into the rivers.

Saw last week one of my heaters decided to pack up in my one Galaxy grow out tank...tank temp dropped from 24 to 12,5degrees overnight... all the fry made it (at least I didn't see any deaths)

 

Agree with all above.
Unless you keep sensitive fish you don't need 27 degrees.
You might as well boil water to have a cup of tea rather than try to use it to get your temp up on a big tank.
About a week ago I spent R2400- and went to get myself 78 pieces of polystyrene of various sizes and thickness to wrap tanks and cover windows and sliding doors in my fish rooms.
In RSA wall thickness of our houses is far less than in Europe (admittedly we haven't got the harsh winters they have), we don't have thick glass for windows, never mind double glazing; but trying to keep your tank 15-20 degrees warmer than ambient temperature will make Eskom cry, ...consider energy efficient ways of keeping your tank warm. :tongue:
+1 on covering tanks with blankets over night in winter.

 

This was a good thread http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/showthread.php?24336-Aquarium-heating

 

hahahahah thanx for the tips guys will lower my tank temp to 25 ^^ when i started the hobie i google the temp and havent changed it yet ^^

also will rather boil myself tea next time . and thanx for the blanket tip!will keep it in mind

 

@ RoGe thanx was a very interesting read!

 

some fotos of last night's feeding

 

Well, I wanted to start my own thread about this, so allow me to semi-hijack the thread. I don't want to sound competitive, but I got you beat on the "load-shedding" issue.I'm gonna set the scene quick. Picture a nice warm Wednesday morning. You just had a cup of coffee, and planning that water change you want to do. When, BAM, power goes off. Not a big issue, it's only load-shedding. Power will be on in 2 hours, so the water change can wait a bit. Well, let me tell you something, the stresses you start to feel when the power still isn't on at 9 o'clock at night (11 hours after it went off) is not fun at all. And that's just the start of it all. By day 5, I was such a nervous wreck, I nearly sold everything for R50!!!!!Only three things helped me out during this time. 1. Aquarium salt, I will forever more swear by this stuff. It's awesome. Even with deteriorating water conditions, there were no signs of stress on my fish. (I think that passed onto me). 2. Knowledge and Common sense. Just knowing what is happening and what will happen, one can make plans to try to keep things under control. 3. Luck. That's all. Unfortunately, my tale does not quite have a happy ending as I lost 1 Red Tail Rasbora to dropsy. And that was another emotional rollercoaster week. Sorry @guillaume, I had to share my story.

 

Were you without power for 5 days???

 

6 days, going on 7. But days 4 and 5 was the worst. When the power returned, I added a massive dose of carbon to my HOB filter.

 

you wat a story i dont mind the steal thats a very very interesting read ^^
do you have any battery powerd airpumps ?

do you mind talking more about yhis salt ?

 

Nah. Nothing battery powered. Do have a 5.5KW generator, and some solar panels. Problem was, the geny don't have frequency control, so I had a struggle to get the pumps working. And then could only run it for about 6 hours a day.

The aquarium salt is like normal table salt, except it's not. As far as I understand it, it is pure sodium chloride (NaCl). It's doesn't have all the additives of normal table salt. I read online that some people use normal table salt and it works for them, but for others it doesn't work. So I guess it's a risk you take, but it's too big a risk for me. I got the good stuff. Also, it's a good defence against some nasties because they can't handle salt, and I think it's also good for the fish's immune system. Just do research on the fish though, some of them don't do salt well at all.

 

jojo sounds horible ! so glad that yoyr tank sortoff made it ! hope you wont get black outs soon

 

Would it not have been easier to take a gas heater and keep the room temperature steady like 22 degrees, There is no need for you to keep the water at 27.

 

so we keep on learning will keep it in mind the blankets works very very well