Hi Guys. We've been our new home for a few weeks now and have already had one storm-related power outage. Thankfully, we haven't had time to set up a new aquarium yet - although that will be coming up in our "to do" list in another month or two.
In the meantime, I'm sorting out how to best prepare for future power outages. It's been many years since I lived somewhere that had overhead power lines (not buried), and there are a LOT of big trees here. It's inevitable that we're going to lose power at least a few times a year, I bet. So far I have thought I should get:
1) mylar survival blankets - one could be taped around the tank during cold weather (and we are due for some serious cold weather in the winters here), and one draped loosely over the top.
2) a battery-powered air pump, with plenty of batteries.
3) a large battery backup unit - I was looking at one of the 200 watt-hour ones as that's kind of stretching my budget but is still doable. The heater we had in Glasgow used 50 watts of power, but it's not on all the time, so theoretically if I had the tank wrapped well enough and the heater came on for maybe 15 minutes out of every hour (??) the 200 watt backup would last 16 hours in total? (That's not long enough, I don't think!)
4) a good-sized bottle of Prime or AmQuel.
Not sure what else we can do. The house is "all electric" as far as that goes. Gas heat, but central hot-air heat that has to have electric to run. The hob is electric. I think I'll be buying some solid alcohol canisters (sterno) so that I can at least heat water in the fondue pot, and can switch it out with the tank water (carefully!) every so often if it comes to that.
We have a number of hot water bottles. In a worst-case scenario I guess we could strap them on and warm them up to human body temperature and then float 'em in the tank?
Any other ideas?
The daughter is torn between that and getting more albino corys and a dwarf gourami and some neons, or perhaps just some female bettas. I'm thinking that the corys would have the best chance of survival if the power goes during the winter, as they like their water a little cooler anyway. The other fish are going to require heroic measures in such a situation, although the bettas could handle the lack of water flow a bit better, for a time. Our bigger tank would maintain its temp better than our smaller betta tank (that did not survive the movers) would have.... just musing here. Our power was only out for a short time, but there are parts of the community here that have been dark for going on two days now. It seems best to prepare in advance!