The horror!!!!!

[Josh]

Well, how did everyone do with the big blackout?

I just did a 20% water change, looks like I lost all of the following:

one damsel
one peppermint shrimp
a LOT of small crustaceans, worms and hermit crabs

Most of my corals look fairly ill as well, let's keep our fingers crossed.

This was with a small UPS which I was using to mix the water every few hours to keep oxygen levels up. I eventually ran out of juice and started blowing air through a hose in hopes of keeping things alive until the power came back on.

My apartment smells like hell.

 

[Pauley Tang]

I live in the last NYC grid to regain power at 9pm tonight after 29 hours.

Losses include my 4 year old majestic angel and mandarin. Hundreds of dead pods, snails and bristle worms all over the place, and some acros. My rose anemone is a soggy melting mess, but my clownfish George and Weezie seem to be fighting their way back. I have no salt for an emergency water change until tom'w, but am running a euro-reef 6-2+ skimmer and carbon to help things out overnight.

Interestingly, my tank NEVER got hotter than 81.5 degrees the entire time. I really thought I had it made, until I noticed my fish panting heavily and pods everywhere. Then it was all down hill from there. This really sucks...

[ August 16, 2003, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: Pauley Tang ]

 

[Josh]

Yeah, my temp was a nice 78-80 the whole time. I am running carbon right now and my skimmer is going nuts.

Good luck.

 

[Justin_NY]

i am sorry to hear that, but everything looks fine in my tank. its probably i keep it in the basement. sorrry for the lost.

 

[EL_DANTE]

Things for me started to look really bad after 8 hours, so I did a large water change and began using my turkey baster to pump air into the system. I also used my siphon to circulate air as well. Lucky for me that everything came back on at 7am, so I was able to save everything w/ my air pumping methods. I'm convinced though, that if the lights were out for any longer, I would have lost everything. Josh and Pauley, sorry to hear about your losses.

 

[Bori]

I installed 2 hagen battery operated pumps w/ airstones (after my ups died after 45 minutes). 1 in the 110 gal & 1 in the 10 gal fuge & braced myself for the worst. After 23 hrs the only thing MIA is a chromis & most of my live rock lost the green encrusted microfauna. My temp stayed steady at 81.1* I did a 100% water change in my 29 gal sump & 50% water change in my fuge once power was restored & thank God nothing else looks any worse for the wear. I know I was lucky & feel for all who lost any life. --Rob--
Lesson learned...BUY MYSELF A GENERATOR!

 

[Rebels23]

Yea this blackout really sucked. I lost a cleaner shrimp, maybe some snails, and tons of mysis, and pods floating around. My temperature was a stable 80.5 and my PH dropped to 7.8

I thought everything was going to be a goner, when I saw all my fish panting for air at the top (weird thing was everything was at the top, including my starfish and all the snails) Luckily I got the power back around 11 AM. My clove polyps and green star polyps are still closed though.

Is most of this stress attributed to lack of oxygen?

Rebels23

 

[Josh]

Yes, thats why everything moves up to the top, there is still some air up there.

 

[Pedro]

I was out of power for 25hrs. Lost 3 fish. Now my acros are starting to bleach. I am setting up a temporary 10gal to house what looks healthy and whatever colonies i have to frag. I used the turkey baster methos as well. Too bad i didn't have the battery powered pumps. Guess that's my next purchase. Now i must rely on luck and hope i can salvage whatever i can. After that the rebuilding starts. Good luck to everyone else.

 

[wedfr]

i noticed all my snails craqling up to the top and thought it was gonna be over soon but my corals came through fine, my 2 chromis are fine too, thats all i had in there which i think is a big reason everythign seemed to make it. Saw a few dead pods but i didnt have all that many i was just starting to see them multiply. And my skimmer went nuts for a little while so i guess some stuff did die, pods, worms etc.. White star polyps look lik ethey took the worst of it, lookin a little ragedy but they are out and i think they will recover just fine

 

[SWW1268]

Horrible. I lost power for 13 hours. Most of my stuff are dead:

- CBS, pep shrimps, emerald crab, lots of mini-stars, bristle worms, hermits
- yellow tang, blue damsel, large domino black clown
- xenia, green loripes, tri color staghorn, green table acro, blue tenuis, purple tip stag, lavender gemmifera, yellow and peach acro

All the monti's though seems to be doing well. An inch of my brown monti digita was out of the water and it was not fazed one bit!

Time to redo the tank.

 

[Josh]

Yes, all of my montis seem to be doing fine!

Looks like all the acros have had it though.

 

[twinreef]

got power about 9 pm friday.i have a power inverter so what i did was hooked it up to my drills 12v battery and powered my powerhead 15mins every hour, and when the batteries would die i just went down striars and recharged them in my car with the power inverter. all thew work paid off i didnt lose anything in my reef. thank god.

 

[Vic8361]

Sorry to here about all the losses


Well hears my story. I got home about 5:15 pm and started to aerated the water by taking a two quart pot of water out of the tank and pouring it back in 20 times every 15 to 30 min's. All seemed to be fine. By three in the morning I was tired and laid down for a moment. Sure enough I fell a sleep. My wife woke me up about 5:30 and told me to check the tank. Being so groggy I took the pot and did the same and laid down again thinking every thing was all right. 10 mins later my son yells papi the fish are dying after he was checking the tank out with a flash light. My bycolor dotty back was dead and my to damsels where upside down panting for air. All my other fish where gasping for air as well. I started to really work the pot and my son took a big cup and started to help me. After five mins of work the damsels swam away and the fish seem to be breathing better though still very stressed out. After that I thoght about moving my magnet back and forth and that really moved the surfice of the water a great deal. So I kept on with pot and mag until the lights came back on at 7am. Thank God all I lost was the bicolor and my midas blenny still a big lost though.
One good thing that happend my coralbanded shrimp was out in the open when the lights came back on. Believe it was still in shock and wouldn't move. I netted it and got it out. Haven't been able to keep any peperment shrimp due to the coralbanded shrimp killing them. I had three pepps in my other tank and swaped them with the coralbanded shrimp. I am so happy I was able to get it out. I was getting to manny aptasias to control them with Kalk injections. so a good thing came out of this terible disaster. Priase God
I wanted to thank God for my family who was there for me and my tank. If it wasn't for them I believe I would of lost most of my fish.

Vic

 

[marrone]

Sorry to hear about all the loses but hopefully some of the corals will come back once the tank stablizes and not all is lose.

So far everything is ok I didn't lose anything, just a small clown trigger. I got home about 6:30 and started using a pail to aerated my 4 tanks, I manual aerated with the pail each tank every 1/2 hour starting about 9pm and then every 15mins after 3am. I turned off all the lights and shut off the filters, so when the electric came on nothing would be running and I could clean everything. I changed all my canister/wet dry filters because they weren't running for about 20hrs. The filter actually didn't smell but I rather be on the safe side. Lucky my apartment was cool the temp reach 80 at noon on Friday, which is when the lights came back on, and the tanks got only as high as 78.

I didn't shut of the electric on my reef tank and when the power came back on the filter started. The coral look really good when the lights first came back on but some didn't look that good later on so I did a water change Friday and Saturday and everything seems to be ok.

I kept the tanks in the dark, no candles and kept the drapes closed until the lights came back on so the fish wouldn't be swimming around and using up oxygen, actually I just didn't want to see if the fish where dying or not as there wasn't much more I could do. When the lights came back on I was very happy that my 2 big tanks, 260gals, which are loaded with fish, were all ok and actually the fish were looking for food.

My co-op is now talking about adding genator for all 5 buildings so this will not happen again.

Michael

 

[jackson6745]

no loss (yet)
I bought 2 battery operated air pumps from a bait and tackle store. They kept everything alive for 28hrs without power. My purple acro has lost a little color and some green zoos won't open. I placed a bag of chemi-pure in my overflow box....we'll see what that does

Good luck to everyone!

[ August 17, 2003, 11:46 PM: Message edited by: jackson6745 ]

 

[Bori]

Has anyone visited any LFS since the power was restored? Are they having sales or have the prices doubled? How bad were the loses if any? --Rob--

 

[marrone]

I know FishTown has genrators so they didn't lose anything and their price are the normal ones. New World didn't lose anything either and they're prices are still the same, which in the most cases are high enough already.

Michael

 

[jreef]

Lost my blueface and goldflake angels, purple and chevron tangs, dwarf golden moray as wellkas mystery, 6-line and tusk wrasses and couple of sps corals. All have been with me for years. The rest is a wait and see game.

I was stuck outside the city and couldn't do anything. Out of power for close to 16 hours.

If this was north of gross negligence (maybe even if it was gross negligence), they ought to fry whomever contributed to it.

If anyone has tried to file under homeowners and succeeded, let me know who's insuring you, I seem to have a carve-out in my policy (which was meant to be one of the best out there).

 

[heuerfan]

Sorry for everyone's losses, this blackout really sucked! My tank made it thru the black out. Here in Fresh Meadows the power went back on at 8AM Friday morning 16 hours later. I added tank water to a container and kept pouring it back into the tank like some of you did, i guess that helped me.

-Steven