Power off, much effort keeping fish alive, fish live, one dies...

[Saadatski]

Ok guys,

We had a big snow strom here in the east coast (yes, in october )

My power went off saturday morning, and i got power last night. In that time, i went through hell keeping my fish alive. I added hot bags of water, cleaned up after sump floods (poor sump design on my part, will fix later), took out water, heated it on the stove then added it back. My 75g stood well against the cold temps, and my kole tang in QT did also well, till today...

power came back on last night, and the heat was restored to both my tanks. the kole tang was doing fine for a couple hours, then i go to check on it. it is white and upside down. I fear it was either underfed during the power outage ( i tried to feed, but none would eat) or disease. WHAT HAPPENED!???

[spamreefnew]

almost the same thing happened to me in the big wind storm a month ago,,,all my fish and corals wear fine without power for 4 full days,when the power came back on my yellow tang up and died! can't for the life of me figure out why.....maybe the rise in temp on an empty stomach ?

[cruzer]

Sorry to hear about your troubles,

How large is the QT tank and was the fish being medicated? I am no expert but would not think that the fish not eating for a couple of days would have anything to do with it. Maybe the tank lacked oxygen do to its size and medications if being used.

Best of luck.
Rob,

[BuckeyeTodd]

possibly when heaters came back on there was a sharp temp swing?

[MojaveReefer]

+1 on sharp temp swing. I had the same issue on a tank last year, temp dropped from 78 to 67 over the course of 3 days. When the power comes back on in instances like that you have to monitor the temp so it does not come back up too quickly.

[Curious George]

Or it could have been a bacteria die off in the filter---power kicks on and it runs through the system.

[username in use]

More likely a factor of die off. As the powerheads come back on and increase the O2 in the water the water you quickly get toxic levels of ammonia.


We temp acclimate fish and corals that have been shipped and bring them up 10-20 degrees within 1/2 hour and they are fine.

[Agua Salado]

Originally Posted by Curious George

Or it could have been a bacteria die off in the filter---power kicks on and it runs through the system.

Learned that the hard way from a cannister filter that dumped all sorts of ick into my DT. Smelled horribly of sulphur.

[89Foxbody]

Fish can tolerate quick upward swings in temperature, so I doubt that's what killed him. I'm going with the die-off theory. We know that even just in deep pool, the water at the bottom is much colder than the water at the top. So a fish who swims from 20-30 feet deep up closer to the surface is not going to drop dead.

[Uncle Salty 05]

Anytime your system is down for any length of time ALL filter media should be rinsed well in saltwater before the sytem comes back up.
There is significant die off in the abscence of oxygen and when you force water through dead media all of that waste gets pumped into your tank.
You will probably see a big ammonia spike.

[krzyphsygy]

During Hurricane Ivan 4-5 years ago my 65gl reef lost power for 7 days and I had purchased prior 8 battery operated air pumps that create air bubbles, I placed 6 in the tank and 2 in the sump. I did this to keep the biological filtration and live stock alive as possible. I switched out the batteries every 24hrs wether the batteries were dead or not, just to keep them going and I did not lose anything fortunately. I also wrapped a comforter around my tank the whole time and the tank stayed at about 76.
Those pumps (battery operated areators) are life savers. They also make some that plug in to an outlet that turn on only when the power goes out. Kinda a safe keep for when your not home or you expect an outage that might happen, raining hard, snow storm ,hurricane, tornado ect. Also a bit expensive but the vortec pump and battery back up is priceless. Nothing of its kind on the market and a strong guarentee to work when you need it.

[moogoomoogoo]

I think it is lack of oxygen that kills. Its not that easy to just kill off bacteria. An ammonia spike from that would take days to peak.

[crvz]

I would also suspect an oxygenation issue, either due to inadequate circulation or from the change in temperature. Warmer water will have less dissolved oxygen, so if your temp went up you could have depleted the O2 levels in the water. And for high metabolism fish (such as tangs), that can be a big deal very quickly.

[Sk8r]

Make all changes slowly: just because a change is in a good direction does not mean that the rate of change is tolerable. In a tank, the rock and sand slow down the rate of change; in a qt tank, not so much. Also---your skimmer and filtration haven't been running, so just as in bagged water, you can build up a situation re ammonia that has been been very slow-going in cold water, but once heated, ALL chemistry speeds up and a bad situation can go catastrophic.
So sorry---it's horrendous to go through all that and then lose one.

[Saadatski]

Thank you guys for all your help. I think it is Exactly what Sk8r said, as when i took chemistry, i remeber reactions happen much faster at higher temps. it was a combination of all what you guys said. I will be getting a new fish soon anyway.