What are your emergency/contingency plans?

I often see threads in the ASAP forum saying, "My anemone died and the fish are breathing hard and the corals are sliming" or "The power is out and the LFS won't open until 10 tomorrow. What do I do???"

I'm curious what you guys have in place in case of disaster. For instance, when the tornado's headed my way last night, I had my flashlight, a bottle of Prime, I always keep new carbon on hand so I don't have to run to the store, I had a battery powered air pump, I had a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) and electric air pumps, and had 42 gallons of pre-mixed and aerated water in case I need to do an emergency waterchange.

What do you guys keep on hand?

 

I usually keep 15-20 gallons of SW for water changes in a Brute Can. I have a 5000W Portable Generator on hand. Since I moved my livestock into my temporary 29 gallon, it should be much easier to run everything if the power were to go out. I also have fresh carbon on hand (BRS!) if I need it.

 

I have a 1000w generator handy (just for the tank), a UPS on the tank, and I keep carbon in the house. I also have at least 10 gallons of unmixed RO (usually more), with some Tropic Marin salt since it dissolves quicker than the Red Sea salt. I have about 20 flashlights throughout the house too, with about 20 rechargeable low self discharge batteries in D and C sizes charged at any given time. I have a couple electric air pumps laying around that I could use if I needed, but I doubt that.

I don't have Prime (although I probably should), since for whatever reason I never really planned for a livestock emergency. I never planned for pump failure either, since there's so many pumps on the tank. 2 Vortechs, 2 circulation pumps to the back chamber, plus the return, plus a bunch of smaller pumps for various stuff.

 

I keep 50 gallons of new RO/DI on hand plus plenty of salt to make new salt water. I also have both types of battery air pumps, the ones that are battery only and the ones you plug in the wall and come on automatically on battery in a power outage. Next I have a 3500w stand by generator which is always ready to go with extension cords and outlet strips taped to the farme so they don't get seperated.
Next I have a spare return pump, heaters and powerheads and two QT or hospital tanks than can be set up in a matter of minutes if needed.

We have experienced power losses in the heat of summer when the local utility could not keep up due to transformer problems a couple times and several times buried electric cables in the area have faulted resulting in some rather lengthy outages so it pays to have a plan in place.

 

I have Prime, carbon, rodi water, salt, spare return pump and a flash light available. Should get a UPS for some of the circulation pumps.

 

never really had to plan for the kind of emergency you experienced Curtis
so I do not have that kind of planning in place


I have experienced short to medium term power outs
repair work occasionally puts power out for an hour or so
some major routing work meant we had a period of 1 day per week with 8 hours of no power and for that I had frozen water bottles in freezer to keep tank temp down
and battery airpumps x 3

I dont purchase creatures with a reputation for tank wipe out capabilities so no nems, sea apples etc
so I dont expect to have that type of tank disaster

but I do have spare wavemakers ( I have 2 spare ones of the same type I use 4 of in my tank ), spare heaters, plenty of carbon etc


hopefully I will never have to experience the act of god type disaster that you went through and thus will never have to consider real emergency situations like many others do have to

 

I have spares of everything needed for my tank including a spare vortech, other pumps, full light system, skimmer.... I run the battery backup on my Vortech to keep water moving, but I also have a battery powered air pump. I always have water on hand, extra carbon and a gallon of prime. If all of this fails, I'm lucky enough to have keys to the LFS

 

LOL.....I'm not sure I would brag about this in front of CJ.

 

I few years ago when hurricane ike over here, we lost power for like 4 or 5 days.. My brother had a tank at the time, and he just put a battery operated circ pump in there.. One that we used for live bait when we went fishing haha. He ended up loosing one or two of his corals, but no fish or other livestock. I'm pretty sure he did a water change somewhere in there though, I'll have to ask him and get back to ya on that.

 

lol I only live five minutes from the shop, so in the event of a power outage, I would be there before stabilizing my tank anyways.