My 120 is good, I only run the T5's a few hours a day, and only started that yesterday (I think, don't know what day it is anymore). Peter - my yellow tailed coris (and favorite fish) has not appeared yet, nor has my green coris wrasse, but everyone else was out today looking fine. The temp in that tank has remained stable. My 45G anemone tank is good too. That has a MH on it nad ir only runs a few hours a day too.
Will have to reacclimate the tanks to full lighting once we have power again. We have heard anywhere from maybe by the middle of next week to another 14 days
Like many of you, after the storm hit we had no communications, texts were it and they each took about 8 hours to send or receive and 99% of those failed to work. I still have only received 4 phones calls to date. I got my hands on a newspaper yesterday and I swear I read every word in it..lol
My family insisted I leave my house during the storm and they stayed to hold down the fort. I hesitently left Monday afternoon and returned after high tide Tuesday morning.
To keep it brief (cause I could sit here and write all night..lol)..I'll go with shorter sentences..
I started to move stuff out of my basement - where my tanks are - last Thursday.
Fri I stood in front of a boat hauling truck and begged him to take my boat out of the water & bring it home. He did it on Sunday, for a kings ransom.
Took all the important irreplacable stuff from the house..photos, policies, computers and filled all the gas cans & cars, got food, water, batteries for my air pumps. I was ready by Saturday morning...when you live this close to the ocean you learn...
We boarded up my basement windows with wood & sealed them with silicone to try to stem the flow of water if it got that high.
On Sunday I wrapped up my boat like she was a prisoner..and tied her to my side stoop. I figured if the rest blew away, she had a bed, head and galley
All day Sunday, I had a song stuck in my head..It's end of the world as we know it....I wanted to scream!
Sunday night I went to feed the family of 6 Swans that have been in my canal all summer. I've been feeding the parents for many years and frankly, they were my biggest worry with the storm. I cried so many times for them over the next 36 hours.
Monday mornings tide brought some street flooding, I didn't want to leave yet, so I stayed until it went back down.
Finally I left and went into Oceanside with my Daughter-in law & Grandaughter and went to her Grandmothers home. I never went to sleep.
The power went out early, so we switched on the radio I brought and hunkered down. I spent half the night in & out the door looking toward home, watching the sky light up with transformers blowing up (or whatever they do when they make those odd lights in the sky). So little rain, lotta wind and too many fires happening. We worried about the huge pine at the house next door that the neighbor promised to get cut down.
I was outside smoking when I heard the crack, watched the pine spin and poof ..it landed on the house we were in (I have a pic, will post later). Only cosmetic damage to the house, so we were very lucky!
The LPIA plant down here went up like it was the 4th of July. I couldn't see the sparks from where I was but the sky lit up yellow & green & blue and I knew it had to be the big power plant
Sporadic texts from home gave me little info. They did warn me there was water surrounding the house..which meant my Koi pond was in trouble and they were doing everything they could....
There were some issues with the generator because some circuits were 'live' in the yard - for the pond - and they had to disconnet those to keep the pumps going.
btw - the pumps used were a Mag drive 18 and an Iwaki
I had to wait past high tide Tuesday morning before I could head home..got back around 11 AM.
The trip was surreal.
I was 10 minutes from my home.
Short of no power in Oceanside and some downed trees, all looked mostly ok until I got near the south end of Oceanside.
The cars people were trying to save by parking them in the shopping centers were tossed all over. They had floated into each other
Many are still sitting there waiting for tow trucks.
The first buildings in IP are a boat dealer/yard on one side and a car wash on the other. There were boats in the car wash. K & K Marine looked like it had exploded.
There was a 40' boat parked next to the 7-11 like it drove there on purpose.
There were boats & docks EVERYWHERE. It was so incredibly sad to see.
We are a boating community. If you don't necessarily know the folks on each boat, you sure as heck know the boat.
I will post pics later...
In the village, all of the businesses are gone, totally flooded out. I was told today that they will have to entirely knock down our Grammar school - it is destroyed.
In the Village of Island Park itself, most of the homes have no basements, so their oil tanks are in their back yards..they floated up and the lines broke..so there is fuel oil everywhere. An absolute environmental disaster.
So many folks here are now homeless and friends and family from Long Beach are staying with other friends here whose houses made it through without too much damage. My friends in East Rockaway who live near the canals have much the same issues too
My son who lives next door to me lost most of his stuff. He is staying here & at the Fire House and his wife & daughter are still in Oceanside. We tore out his walls & floors today and hope to replace them by next week.
My other neighbors left during the storm and their basement filled with sewage..like a lot of others. The girl behind me had a huge sailboat heading straight for her home during the storm..thankfully it hit some debris and fell to the side.
After I came home I was told a couple of things..one that my younger son likely saved my house by putting a towel in a plastic bag and shoving it as far as possible into the toilet in my basement , and plugged it up..the other that that same son and his girlfriend spent hours in my yard - during the early part of the storm trying desperately to save my Koi who I have had for many years..without the heartwrenching details..only one made it though they found many struggling to stay alive in the saltwater. Loss of life - of any kind - tears my heart apart.
I have been told I am the luckiest person here (where I live) as we made it through with much less damage than most, for this I am incredibly thankful!!
My heart goes out to all of those who have lost loved ones and the others who lost so many things important to them..the folks in Breezy Point, and on SI and the other hard hit areas of Long Island and Jersey and everywhere that Sandy brought so much loss and pain and heartache.
..and yet somehow we are looked upon kindly when the sun rises the next day and we find that somehow, some way a family of swans has made it through the storm...
