Who lost their tanks during sandy

[tagraham]

Like it says who lost their tank with a picture befor and after (if u can) sandy took it. Granted I know people lost so much more than their tanks and most still don't have power and I sympathize. I've been there (Katrina). But a lot of us have followed some of these tanks for a long time and want to know how you, your families and our tanks faired.

[bhazard451]

I was lucky. Power was out for 3 days, and I nearly lost the tank.

Even with a battery backup for flow, and a battery powered air pump, I never took into account the heater and how to power it after an extended outage. The tank was at 65 degrees right before power came back.

I only lost 1 torch. Everything else lived and 90% is back to normal. I was lucky.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

[Dave Thebrewguy]

So far I've been pretty lucky, I've been able to get enough fuel to run my generator an average of 15 hours per day. Still, the temp has fluctuated quite a bit and I'm sure my animals are stressed. The only actual loss has been a single polyp on a zoa frag, it just withered away to nothing.

[tagraham]

Bump

[drukkosz]

i have 125g and lost power for 40 hours. had a small battery beckup and was able to run tunze pump for 6 hours but during the night temp dropped to 70 degrees. Next day called few places and was able to buy small generator. Was running pump and heater on it. Was lucky didnt loose anything. Just my purple tang got few white spots but looks like he is recovering nicely!

[rrasco]

Man...I lost power late Saturday night for about 5 hours at 1am. I was so panicky trying to keep an eye on my tank and make sure it survived, all I could think about was everyone that had to deal with that for an extended period of time up in the tri-state area. I need me a backup plan.

[TwistedMind]

RRasco, im in corpus so it probably won't be much help but my tank is available if you need temporary housing for anything or if you want to cut some frags and ill store / grow them for you in case something happens in the future.

PM me on MAAST because ill never find this thread again.

on the otherside, the misfortune experianced by you all has bestowed upon me the desire to buy a generator and fuel storage system, I just don't know if I can talk a delivery company into coming to my house for 100 gallons of fuel once a month lol.

[d2mini]

If you live in a house or other private residence that will allow it, I feel having a generator is a MUST HAVE. You just never know when power is going to go down for extended periods of time. A few hundred bucks is cheap insurance when you are dealing with thousands in live stock, not to mention all the time and hard work you put into it.

My condolences to anyone out there who lost their tanks during this storm.
But in the grand scheme of things, tanks can be rebuilt... homes are tougher and lives can not be, so in the end take care of you and yours!

[rrasco]

LOL. It's all good, I have extra tanks, it's the power thing that got me! Everything survived, might I even say I had some better PE on a few things. I was worried oxygen levels would get too low, but they survived.

I did get an airline tube and blow into it for about 5 minutes at a time on a few occasions. Yeah.

I have been looking for a UPS this morning. Trying to find one that will run my return pump for an extended period of time. From my quick calculations, a 1350VA unit I am looking at will run my 48W return pump for an estimated 2 hours. And that could be more since I just doubled the run time as I halved the load, but it's actually a nonlinear curve as load decreases. If that makes sense.

In the end, I really want an automatic fail-over generator to keep my house powered up.

[Dexters Reef]

I had inverters to run my filters on my 46 and 75g tanks, but did not think about heat. Generator did not arrive in time. I swapped out my mesh lids for glass lids to trap in heat, wrapped the tanks in 3-4 blankets each and hoped for the best, and these are my results

I lost all coral in my 14g biocube..torch, zoos, shrooms, and both fish in it, a two spot hogfish and a clownfish. Couldnt find the hogfish body to remove it...thought he might be hiding and still alive...next day noticed water all hazy and found all that remained was his head and some jelly. All inverts snails, crabs etc died also.

My 75G reef had no losses, but one of my sps corals is pale. My lyretail anthia made it a week with only one feeding! (hes newer and doesnt eat flake food, only frozen, and I lost power to my freezer and feared my frozen food went bad so I held off feeding it) He is happily gobbleing up food and acting just fine along with my other 6 fish.

My 46G fish only bowfront lost a 5" harbor goby, and severely stressed my 5" banana wrasse. I thought the wrasse was dead when the power came on, he was on his side in the middle of my tank on the sand bed. I poked him and he didnt even flinch. wasnt breathing. I was too depressed to remove the body since he was my favorite fish in my house, and put it off till later. After the heaters ran for a few hours, and the tank raised from 60 to 75, I went to do the dirty work. Banana wrasse was missing! Found him sitting behind the rockwork breathing heavily. Next day, he was in the same spot, but now today he is swimming active, eating and acting normal! Hes a surviver and Im really happy he made it!

[NarakuAulonocar]

Sorry for your loss.

I'm in the same boat, I lost my red sea heniochus after 7 days of outage (It lived 7 days). I still have no power. Its freezing in my house and I'm typing from my University.
I am still angry about this. I scrambled to find a generator knowing nothing about one and they were all sold out. I was just hoping I wouldn't wake up to a dead fish and Voila.
What sucks even more is liveaquaria isn't selling my species of fish anymore.

Out power company is too slow. 7 daysand still no results... seriously
Learned from Irene my ***, where is our power?
I have seen my local business with power but houses are still dark.
Is money all they see..

Screw sandy and our power company!
Sorry won't cut it, say that to my dead fish.

[bb]

I went from Mon @7 to Saturday late evening. I have a 180 DT/300 gal system with the works in the basement so there is a lot of power needed to run the system. I had a 400watt inverter which was just enough to juggle a few pumps to keep water flowing and a small heater. I heated up and rotated about 20 plastic water bottles in boiling water to keep the tank around 70. Luckily a buddy lent me a generator on Wed. Even then it wasn't big enough to really run lighting etc.

My sps have browned out a little and I completely lost my most prized Rainbow Acan. One of the brightest I've ever seen. In reality this was due to the fact that when working on the tank I nudged a lock-line return. With the lights out I didn't notice it blew sand over my Acan and completely buried it. Didn't notice it till the next day. As upset as I am it could have been so much worse!

[S14Swap240sx]

my biocube was at my parents house in mantoloking, cause i havnt moved into my house in point pleasant yet.. long story short and a week later we finally where able to get to the mantoloking house.. everything is dead.. my salt, and my brothers two fresh water tanks.

and unfortunently my125g in the office isnt doing so hot. have the tank wrapped, battery air stone, hot water top offs to maintain something around 60 degrees.. but nights are freezing and today i pulled out 5 dead fish.. im sure there are more. priority was rushing to make point pleasant livable for myself and my parents, and get to mantoloking to asses damages. last time i put a tank at the office.

[S14Swap240sx]

Out power company is too slow. 7 daysand still no results... seriously
Learned from Irene my ***, where is our power?
I have seen my local business with power but houses are still dark.
Is money all they see..

Screw sandy and our power company!
Sorry won't cut it, say that to my dead fish.

im not sure where your from, but if you saw the real damages this storm caused first hand and the efforts that have been made to restore it in a timley manner, the last thing i would say is screw the power companies.

[bb]

im not sure where your from, but if you saw the real damages this storm caused first hand and the efforts that have been made to restore it in a timley manner, the last thing i would say is screw the power companies.

+1 the crew that finally got my power back on was up all the way from South Carolina. They had been working 16 hours on and 8 off since Tuesday.

[MeanGreenEyes]

Sorry for all those who lost their tanks/livestock...

I was/am soooo lucky to be one of the few to make it out unscathed...my power flickered several times but luckily never went out.

I did get an airline tube and blow into it for about 5 minutes at a time on a few occasions. Yeah.


This made me lol...ahhh...the things we do for our tanks...

[MeanGreenEyes]

delete

[rrasco]

+1 the crew that finally got my power back on was up all the way from South Carolina. They had been working 16 hours on and 8 off since Tuesday.

I know our local power companies sent crews up there too.

[tmb]

Sorry to all for the headaches and losses.
Battery backups, generators and inverters only help for so long

[kaxt]

I just got power back today. The first 2 or 3 days I used a generator to charge a deep cycle battery to run the heater and return pump, but the battery only lasted 7 hrs each charge and I was only able to charge it once or twice a day because of the gas shortage. After Wednesday we had run out of gas and I wasn't able to find any more. I had read on here that someone had cut a hole in a basketball and put airline tubing in the hole and then pumped up the ball. The air stone would only bubble for about 10 minutes after I stopped pumping, but I think that definitley saved my tank. I only lost some zoas.

By the time the power came back on all my fish were gasping at the surface and swimming funny and the temp had droped to about 59 degrees. Everyone is looking better now that they are getting warmed up.

[auem]

I just got power back today. The first 2 or 3 days I used a generator to charge a deep cycle battery to run the heater and return pump, but the battery only lasted 7 hrs each charge and I was only able to charge it once or twice a day because of the gas shortage. After Wednesday we had run out of gas and I wasn't able to find any more. I had read on here that someone had cut a hole in a basketball and put airline tubing in the hole and then pumped up the ball. The air stone would only bubble for about 10 minutes after I stopped pumping, but I think that definitley saved my tank. I only lost some zoas.

By the time the power came back on all my fish were gasping at the surface and swimming funny and the temp had droped to about 59 degrees. Everyone is looking better now that they are getting warmed up.

how frequent you had to do that and for how long.....?!

glad that you are coming out unscathed...:thumbsup:

[volume7654]

still no power or heat here (central nj) power went out monday around 8pm; 90 gallon reef.

Was running some pumps off a inverter from the car, for a few hours on and off for the first 2-3 days (temperature dropped to around 60 degrees), then i was able to come across a generator that is able to power the whole tank but due to the gas crisis i have been running it for about 12-15 hours a day, so still experiencing the pretty large temp swings, from about 78 back down to 66-68 over night. All in all stuff looks pretty good besides a tricolor acro that was struggling a bit before the storm has bit the dust, and a gold tipped hammer which was awesome prior to sandy, but now is not looking to hot at all. As for fish i only have three and they are fine.

good luck to everyone.

[kaxt]

I pumped the basketball up every 2 hours or so when I was home. I spent about 5 mins pumping so the tank got about 15 minutes at a time with the air stone bubbling pretty strong. I had to go back to work on Thursday so I was gone for 9-10 hours a day and would come home and pump avery half hour or so just to get the D.O. back up.

I only have 3 small fish and a couple inverts so my bioload is still small- it's a new tank.

[ruimendes7]

Live on the Jersey Shore got evacuated couldnt go back for 11 days. Cant believe it

[auem]

Live on the Jersey Shore got evacuated couldnt go back for 11 days. Cant believe it

very sad,feel sorry for you....but that ending was pretty much certain.... :(

not 'too much' lost in term of money still i guess....a very nominal tank....
also don't put 2 tangs in that again...:wave:

[ruimendes7]

very sad,feel sorry for you....but that ending was pretty much certain.... :(

not 'too much' lost in term of money still i guess....a very nominal tank....
also don't put 2 tangs in that again...:wave:




Wow. Thanks. Nominal Tank? You must have the Baltimore Aquarium at your house. And 2 Tangs were just fine.

[bhazard451]

If you live in a house or other private residence that will allow it, I feel having a generator is a MUST HAVE. You just never know when power is going to go down for extended periods of time. A few hundred bucks is cheap insurance when you are dealing with thousands in live stock, not to mention all the time and hard work you put into it.

My condolences to anyone out there who lost their tanks during this storm.
But in the grand scheme of things, tanks can be rebuilt... homes are tougher and lives can not be, so in the end take care of you and yours!

Generators only help for so long. What eventually happens, is that gas runs out in the area like it did here within 2-3 days, either because stations are without power, or the ones that do run out. It then renders the generator useless.

We still have people without power and a gas shortage 10 days later.

[Green Chromis]

:fish1:Generators are the only long term solution to long blackouts. You need to calculate the amount of fuel you'll need for a week or so so you don't run out, by then hopefully you can find more fuel or the power will be restored. My present tank and house survived 7 1/2 weeks without power after Hurricane Andrew.:fish1: