Power Outage...

It was a hot sunny Alabama day when all of the sudden I see a giant bolt of lighting outside the window..rain starts pouring down and the skies are all of the sudden black..the power flickers..5 minutes later another bold hits..this time i see a big blue explosion behind another building in my apartment complex and the power went completely out..i knew it was going to be a while so I tried to leave and go get one of those batter powered air pumps..I get to the gate and what do you know..the powers out so it wont open..perfect..The power ended up being out for about 2 1/2 hours..when it came back on my lionfish had a strange orange tint and none of my corals looked happy..today everything is fine except my grape coral (Euphyllia Cristata)..I have two heads and in the middle of the second head it is sucked in with brown goopy slime coming out...could just 2 1/2 hours of no power have caused this? I monitered the temperature during the outage and it only got down to 78 degrees from the usual 80..so i'm guessing the oxygen levels is what made everything unhappy?

 

I dont think the power going out for 2.5 hours will hurt anything. Ive had the power go out for longer than that with no ill effects. Sorry I cant help you with the coral

 

If it happens again--take a pitcher and scoop out water--hold it about 2ft over the tank and pour it in--This agitates the surface thus keeping the water oxygenated--Do this every 30 min until power resumes.

 

good to know! thanks robman..makes sense!

 

LFS here blew a transfer box on their shop yesterday and were down for several hours. I went in today and everything was fine.

also, on automatic gates, if the power is off they can be opened manually, just have to push em. A commercial unit is built to be manually operated, shouldn't hurt it. For future reference. It's a safety thing, NFPA (fire codes) specify it and all that.

 

water temp going down, would have helped your oxygen levels , better that way than the other way, water temp going up would have been a bigger issue, but again for 2/5 hours I doubt anything would have a long term problem

IMO the grape coral was just expelling waste and will be fine

Steve

 

ehh i've seen my frogspawn poop..almost every day..and it's not this..the middle section of the head is for sure decaying..i'm really bummed..it's my healthiest/favorite coral..no matter what it's always looked happy..but like i said..the outer edges are still okay..maybe it will grow back and fill in..and the other head is still okay!

my camera is in my truck so if i remember to get it when i go down there later i'll post a picture of it

I didn't think that the power outage caused this..but it's the only thing i can think of because just minutes before it the coral was just fine..and my fish turning orange..no idea what that's about..

 

Temp going down actually makes the oxygen level go up. Not directly but it slows the metabolism of the tank down so that it uses less oxygen so the net result is more oxygen in the water. When the temperature goes up, the metabolism go up and they suck the oxygen out of the water. With high temps it isn't the temperature itself that kills, its the lack of oxygen that kills.
The water dumping method saved my 90G tank in Florida during a hurricane. I spent most of the night dipping/dumping water, its a very good way to oxygenate and provide water movement. It will also give you a serious workout.

 

Here is picture of the grape coral.. definite deterioration..