How cold can a saltwater aquarium get?

yup yup great advice here..

 

I know this is an older post, so I'm not sure where things stand Hopefully things are worked out? The temp should not be an issue for days or so, longer and slightly lower could be. Definitely good idea to invest in a battery powered air pump. Adding hydrogen peroxide is very risky as it is a powerful oxidizer and may do significant damage by itself. The pitcher idea sounds good, water flow is probably more important than O2 actually. Corals and reef fish are know to survive significantly hypoxic conditions. Stagnant conditions are probably much worse. There needs to be some water flow somehow.

 

I used to think a generator was overkill... I have a UPS battery back up that I plug one of my Koralia pumps into, it will last for at least 6-8 hours...

But recently, I'm thinking about a generator more and more... I feel in an emergency, I could probably rent one... but I've considered getting one just to have for things like camping trips and stuff... and ready to use for the reef if I ever needed it.

 

I once had a power issue as well and my tank temperature dropped to 58 degrees. I did not lose anything. One other time I lost power and hooked up a power head to some batteries and let it run. While the power was out for only 24 hours the power head seemed to keep everything happy and no issues were noted. Key is to keep the water aerated.

 

i would if i could afford one, just something big enough to power the tank heater and return pump, house furnace (ours is gas so just the blower really), maybe the fridge... We lost power for a few days this past winter and thankfully i didn't have any fish at the time but i was still scrambling to keep the tank semi warm. Didn't want to kill off the little i had left.
Jgut, any update? How things going down there???

 

I'm in Atlanta and the crazy tornado weather literally split into two halves and went just north and south of Atlanta... it was like moses parted the red sea or something. I've seen some of the devastation of the tornados and it was pretty bad... what is even worse is the lives that were lost. Tornados are scary stuff, they happen so quickly and you can never be fully prepared.

Thankfully, we only had a power outage of about an hour this time.... I know places near here were out for a few days...

Usually the city is much faster about restoring power than rural areas, but I've had an outage that lasted at least two days once about 8-9 years ago when we got some of the aftermath of hurricanes from El Niño.

 

I know I'm thinking outside the box right now, but what about having a small fire going in your backyard (if you have one), heating some water in a pot, and then pouring that water in tuppaware containers or ziplocks to float in the tank????

 

while you're at it, roast some marshmallows and make smores... mmmm...smores.

 

You are totally right... i would have suggested something like this earlier but seeing as how we haven't seen an update in a while... Gosh, hope all is good. Anyway, i've done this before (not over a campfire but...) Boil water and carefully put it into a milk jug, float these in the water and it will very effectively raise the temp... If i remember correctly... 1 jug of boiling water raised the water temp about 5-7* in roughly 10-15 min. Biggest problem i see with this is that's a pretty drastic temp change. I've only done this with a large amount of water in preparation for a huge water change (don't have another heater...) and in an emergency when i didn't really have any fish thankfully...

 

Well everything worked out for the good. Lowest the temp got was about 66 and my tank runs at 78. My feather duster lost some "feathers" but is looking better. I like the floating hot water in the tank idea. I would have never thought of that. My aquarium is on the west side on my house so evening sun helped hold the temp steady. It was a real "crazy" week down here. I mean we cooked on open fires every night for dinner. Lol. The weirdest thing though was not being able to get gas or any supply cause there were none . They were gonna turn everyones water off bc the didnt have gas to run the pumps. Luckly it didnt come to that. You would have just had to experiance it first hand i guess to see it like i did. Like i was living it the dark ages. Haha. I mean we are still cleaning up damage around where i live. Sorry to dig up and old thread but i would like to thank everyone for the help with the situation.