Storm tales losses saves???

[Jumpincactus]

I would like to hear from reefkeepers that live in WA and how you and your critters survived or didnt survive the storm asd its aftermath.

Here is my story............Well here is a little contradictory information as to the need to keep almost perfect temps in a reef tank. although I am not saying that corals are best kept at constant temps my experience this weekend with the worst wind storm in WA history would indicate otherwise.

I set my alarm to wake me at 3;00 am to turn the generator on as I had been running the lights and circulation about every three hours for a few hours to conserve on gas as most of the stations were either out of gas or unable to pump it due to not having the electricity to pump it. It was bitter cold on Friday night. As I said I had set my alarm to wake me at three and because I was so tired from not sleeping on Thursday evening waiting for some big trees to come crashing down I did not actually wake up until 9 am the following morning I awoke in a sheer panic and found my temp had fallen to 69 degrees. The circulation had also been off for around 10 straight hours.We finally got more gas on Saturday in downtown Bellevue and I have been running the generator since.

I am here to tell you after running the blues and later running one MH at a time to slowly bring the tank temps up I have had not ill effects at all. The fish look great and the coarals are showing great polyp extension and feeding well. The tank is thriving as well as it did before the storm.

I am not suggesting to try this at home, but my point is, I believe our critters, especially SPS and LPS are hardier than we are led to believe. Is this just a fluke with my system? I think not. The corals we keep as proven by my mishap are tougher than we think. But again I am not advocating that,keeping constant a temp is not important,but I am beginning to wonder just how critical this is and are we being taught and led to believe that the sky will fall if we are'nt extremly anal about it.

I do however believe that as a species that out critters can probably tolerate extremes in lower temps better than higher temps.

Can any one else chime in on how you weathered the storm and report any near misses or losses you may have had,,,, and my heart goes out to anyone that lost any of your critters

 

[trido]

Im glad to hear that your tank is good. I was wondering about it. I ran my truck in the driveway for most of the night to keep the 500 watt power inverter going. I did go four hours with no circulation and the temps dropped to 74 because I was only running one of my two heaters.

Not a single inhabitants seemed to show any ill effects.

I am currently workng on getting a 6300 watt generator that I will hard wire to the house.

 

[mfinn]

I think we will hear alot of horror stories in the coming days/weeks.
I had a generator that is wired into my house, so I lost nothing except my primary pc. (anybody want to work on my pc for zoanthid frags?http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21196)
I did shut off my generator for about 6 hours, just to give the neighbors a break. But I told them what I was going to do in advance and they considered that to be generous, because they know how much my tanks mean to me and the shear cost of everything if I were to lose all.
My tank temp did drop about 5-6 degrees in that time which really surprized me.
I hope that we hear more good stores than bad.

 

[ronj]

i don't have the problems some of you guys in the north have, but my coral tank(20g) fluctuates all the time..i have a chaep glass heater on it..it goes haywire once or twice a week..it will be 86 degrees some days when i wake up..sometimes it will be 68-69 degrees..my corals are all alive and doing well still.. i used to freak out when it happened, but it happens alot now, so i don't worry about it

 

[Meche]

I ran my truck in the driveway for most of the night to keep the 500 watt power inverter going.

The world's most inefficient power generation plant.

Quick math: .5kW*1.333hp/kW=0.666hp I'd guess your truck makes anywhere from 30-50hp at idle. .666/30= .022; .666/50= .013.

So, not including the inefficiencies of the engine itself, your looking at about 1.3 - 2.2% efficient.

It shouldn't take you too long to pay for that generator in savings. Good move. Luckily, I haven't encountered this problem yet, but now that I think about it, I probably would have done the same for my little guys.

Good luck to all you guys over there.

 

[Electrokate]

I feel really bad for you guys... moved to Hawaii on Halloween and looks like I missed out on the worst PNW winter in decades! I left my reef tank in the care of a friend in an isolated area outside Oly and the fish/RBTA clan with Tangee. She has a generator, as my does my friend but he bought a weak one. It won't run the return pumps. So I guess you gotta read the fine print on what you are buying.
He is heating with wood stove, put blankets on the tanks, and I left him with automatic battery powered air pumps for things like this. Says it's 73 degrees in the tanks and no light but when he lifts the blankets the polyps are out, fish are swimming and xenia is pumping! Go figure.
If you are running a generator please be careful with the fumes... they already treated over 100 people for CO poisoning in Seattle. Many of those are people who are used to indoor cooking fires bringing grills in and shutting the doors but some are from generator exhaust.
I got a job doing tank maintenance and we can't have any coral or liverock here but am learning to enjoy the ease and diversity of FO systems. (which still died off in the earthquake power outage last month). I miss my tanks, am on pins and needles wondering how they will survive. Yeah they are fine now but for 4 more days? My sister is an insurance claims adjustor, she said the electric people in Portland told her it would be a week as of Friday til all the power was back on. They are not telling the public that. Some never lost it, since they bury the lines too. This storm they didn't just lose the electric wires, they lost the entire pole!
Good luck. hope everyone has minimal losses and stays safe. And start mixing water cause you will need a change I was told after something like this to bring the temp back up slowly, what do you guys think? I know some people will be eager to get their systems back up to 78. Could be scary...
Kate
PS you can get a noisy battery powered air pump at a bait supplier, they are used by fishermen... bet the aquarium ones are sold out but they are much quieter.

 

[Llarian]

I borrowed a generator from my boss when I saw the tank temperature on my nano at about 55 degrees and it hadn't had any aeration other than manually moving around some water for about 36 hours. (Actually, I had a nano-stream and a heater running for about 3 hours in the middle, so not 36 hours straight).

Power came back on just as I was unloading the generator. All the coral appears to be just fine and the dottuyback I thought was dead appears to still be alive.

My LMB (my favorite fish too) seems to have just flat out diappeared. I can't figure out what happened to him.

All things considered, could have been a lot worse.

-Dylan

 

[Rock-N-Ruin]

I was out of town and lost my 6' clown tang..(awsome fish) 5" sailfin tang, 5" common wabbit fish, 1 of my maited pair of GSM clowns, the male has lived!, lost 2 of 3 green chromis.. I lost 2 (in seperate tanks) Coral beauties! somehow my yellow watchman goby survived and so did my 4" Niger Trigger, but he's a tuf guy... my tangs were the biggest loss and my female GSM... I am tearin every thing down, (halfway there) and selling most of the stuff, I will keep a nano, I will have lots going in the for sale section as the days progress... J

 

[tamarindthai]

i lost power for 3 -1/2 days,,run gen for the whole time,seccond day my A-S neighber turn my gen off after we left the house for 3 hrs tank down to 68 degree:evil: ,still don't know who,,stay in the house about 41 degree it is cooooolllld,,,the whole time just to keep my eye on the neighber,, just got the power back 2hour ago,,so far so good ,,just gonna keep my finger across.Sory to hear the lost of you guy.

 

[Meche]

my A-S neighber turn my gen off after we left the house

I had a roommate in college that would turn my alarm clock off in the middle of the night so he wouldn't wake up to it in the morning.

A good ass-whopin' took care of that.

 

[coil1002]

I lost power around 1 am I had two deep cycle marine batteries and a 1000 watt power inverter so I was able to keep my tank heated and one power head going till 2 pm the next day when the power came back on. Every thing came through with flying colors but only because I knew I was going to lose power. Now all I have to do is keep the batteries charged and hope to be around when the power goes out. may be later I will set it up to auto change over

 

[8mycash]

I have a 10kw natural gas generator wired into my home. I should have been fine. But thanks to some mystic power a tree came down on some power lines beside the natural gas switch. So they shut off my natural gas and I had no power. 500 gallons of water cools off fast. My battery ups system lasted about 24 hours. I went out and bought a gas power generator, powr came on 38 hours later. Lost one sps coral, of course it was one of my favorites. Ran power cords to the neighbors close to give them some power and not have me for having a generator. Good luck guys

 

[Waterboy]

I lost power for 3 1/2 days, lost 1 B/W Clown. I don't have as much as most. 1 Yellow Tang, 2 gobies, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 anenome, 1 toadstool leather, and a few zoas.
Tank got down to 68. Then did some yankee engineering last night(since it was going to be below freezing).
I bought a emergency blanket $1.99 and about 10 hot packs $.79 each. Wrapped the emerg blanket around the tank, then taped all of those heat packs on the outside of that. The temp went up to 70 and stayed steady.
Power has been on for about 8 hours now and my 90 gal tank is at about 79. So far, so good... except my B/W Clown.

 

[snobanker]

Lets see.....untwist untwist untwist....glug glug glug....twist twist twist...click ....pull, brrrrr....pull, brrrrr, pull, brrrrrwhhheeeeeeeeeeeee...5000w's later.....no loses. whew. Years ago I wired my entire house up for my generator due to almost 3 outages a year...best thing I ever did. My roof didn't fair as well though, lost 1/3 of the shingles on the south side, bummer.

Sorry for all those that lost things though, bummer. I know there are still folks without power still. During the Inagural day storm we were out for 7 days...yuck

 

[Wolfesbane]

I just got power back last night, so I was out for almost 72 hours. Temp dipped as low as 60. Lost a pipefish and my small school of chromis. The only fish survivor was one of Elmo's juvie clowns. What a trooper! Corals look alot better than I expected, the only obvious loss is the xenia, but there are a couple nubs left that might rebound. Painful, but it could have been worse.

~ Steve

 

[Blazer88]

I made it through just fine. I picked up a 4000W Honda generator from my dad's house on Thursday and got everything setup before power blew on Thursday (speaking of blew, anyone watch the 'hawks? lol). I would run a 400W inverter off an RV battery at night to keep a single SEIO running and nothing else. The temp would drop down to about 70 at night which seemed fine. I would start the generator in the morning and run the tank with everything as normal and heat back up to 80. I got power back on Saturday evening but still have no cable/internet. Thankfully no losses for me.

 

[mfinn]

I made it through just fine. I picked up a 4000W Honda generator from my dad's house on Thursday and got everything setup before power blew on Thursday

So having neighbors as close as you do, was there any problems with the noise, ffrom the gen, with your neighbors?
What time at night did you shut down your generator?

 

[cwby416]

I ran my Generator 24/7 untill the power came back on...I have told all my neighbors that I would, if the power ever went out. Mine is a 3000w and just sounds like someone mowing a lawn....

 

[Blazer88]

So having neighbors as close as you do, was there any problems with the noise, ffrom the gen, with your neighbors?
What time at night did you shut down your generator?

I never had any complaints at all as my neighbors are all really nice. They said they could barely even hear it. I ran it from about 8am until 10pm before I switched to my RV battery. I even had some power to spare so I threw one neighbor a power cord so he could keep his fridge cold

 

[DonW]

We found out in pierce county it is unlawful to turn off someones generator. Generators can be run 24/7 at a single family house, does not apply to apartments. If someone complains about the noise they will be advised, that generators do not apply.
My generator is loud but powers my entire house except the dryer, it even bothers me.

Don