My Christmas Gift....ugh

[Jarosh]

Well my Christmas eve was great until about 9:30 pm, when the lights dimmmed and then totally went out. After the wife and I rounded up some flash lights and candles, I realized the sump on my 30 gal was starting to over flow onto the floor. I guess waiting until after the holidays to adjust the top off in my sump wasn't going to help me now. Well after gathering some towels and partitioning off the stand from the rest of the room, I realized I best dig up the battery operated airpumps. I found the first one rather quickly in my black hole of a garage and set it up on my 90gal reef. For the next 30 min I searched for the other pump, while alternating every 5-10 min between the 30 and 90. At this time I was about an hour and a half into the power outage. So at this time I had one pump going on the 30 and the other going on the 90. This was good for about an hour until the newer pump decided to call it quits. A small plastic pin that toggles the pump membrane snapped clear off. So I was back to alternating a single pump between the 2 tanks. This lasted for another hour and a half while I tried to rig the broken pump. Fortunately I was able to glue up the part. So now I was back to 2 pumps and pushing 2 am. At this time I decided to try and get a little sleep as 5 am was fast aproaching and unfortunatley I had to work this Christmas. So I set the alarm for 30 min intervals where I would quickly check the pumps and get a few winks inbetween. It was about 4:30 am when the power came back on with a flash of lights and blaring TV. The sound of pumps turning over cut through the exhaustion as I jumped up to do a quick run through of the set-ups. Most of the fish were hiding out and some of the soft corals were looking a little wilted, but overall no worse for ware.

 

I'm back from work now and so far everything looks to be in good shape, fish are out and about. Corals seem fine except where a few were knocked over from poking around with the airstone. I'm super glad I picked up these battery operated airpumps, in light of the $$$ I could have lost this was the best 14$ I could have spent. Also I was a bit upset I had to work for X-mas, but otherwise I would have been out of town and been coming back to a near if not total loss of fish and corals.

 

Xeon how did you make out? Did you lose power as well?

[traveller7]

Glad to hear all your preparation saved the day

[xeon]

Paul,

The short answer is yes. You and I were among the lucky. I've lived here several years and have lost power for maybe 10 minutes at a time. I knew it was bad news when the power tried to reset itself three times and nothing. Aside from having livestock in need of power... it was Christmas Eve!!!

 

I had my head in the fridge putting away the last of the left overs from Christmas Eve dinner when "the event" sprung its ugly head. I went scrambling for a flashlight. The first detail on my mind was to check the tanks... no water on the floor and the returns broke syphon as they should have. Yipeee!

 

I had Bek call Ed and he had a UPS ready for me by the time I got there. I ran two powerheads in each tank with a little venturi action. Some current and aeriation... eased my stress a tad.

 

Aside from doing Mr. & Ms. Claus by candlelight, I was awake pretty much until the lights came on. I finally decided to get some shuteye (1 hour maybe) but made sure the lights in the bedroom were on. Per my plan this woke my wife who promptly let me know to shut the lights off in the room. I oblidged and checked the tanks. I kept the powerheads on the UPS for safety sake and called it a night.

 

Everything looked good today from the few times I did look them over. Looking back I didn't gain anything by watching over the tanks... but I did nonetheless. Glad to hear you made out as well, I did wonder how you were doing up the road.

[dbartco]

Sorry about the bad luck. Glad to know you both made it through.

 

And, GO Joe Pa, beat the Criminoles!

[Caribbean Jake]

power, batteries, electricity....

 

I wonder how many of us give it for granted... until we experience the above.

 

 

Jarosh - great job, I :77: for your efforts.

Dave (xeon) glad to hear nothing happened.