What you need to know to keep your animals alive!

Every winter many people face strong storms and risk power failure in their home. While most people only have to worry about the food in their refrigerator going bad, reef aquarists have their reef aquarium to worry over. When the power goes out you lose all recirculation in the aquarium and temperature control. The lack of water movement can result in rapid reduction of the available oxygen as your animals continue to consume it and the inability to heat or cool your aquarium can result in increased stress.

There are many ways for your reef to survive a power outage though and a little planning can go a long way! In this article we will cover the various methods and concerns regarding your aquarium with no electricity.

To start we can look at what is most important in keeping your reef alive during the outage. Although lighting is critical to our photosynthetic corals, our reefs can usually handle a few days without light. Some more sensitive animals such a Tridacnid sp. clams may not handle more than 3 days of darkness well, but most of our corals can.

The biggest factor is going to be the lack of recirculation in the aquarium. Without the water moving it is going to be difficult for proper gas exchange to occur, and your fish and corals will quickly consume the oxygen within a few hours and begin to die. Fish dying can set off a chain reaction as they begin to pollute the water, or in some cases poison it depending on the animal.

Another factor is the temperature of the water. Depending on your location a power outage might mean a drop in temperature or an increase. A drop in temperature is going to be preferable to an increase because it is directly related to the rate at which the animals will consume the oxygen. Higher temperatures results in greater respiration and faster oxygen depletion. If the water goes too far extreme in either direction it can result in death of your animals though. Stability should be the goal and our solutions will revolve around that.

Solutions

Generators

The first and most obvious solution to the power going out is to use a generator to restore power to your home or certain appliances. With a small generator you can easily power your pumps and possibly a heater to keep the water up to temperature and well oxygenated. The major drawback to using the generator is that they are expensive and sometimes noisy to run. You typically want to run your equipment directly from the generator rather than trying to power your house with it unless your house is properly wired for this. When using a gasoline generator it important to remember to run the generator outside where gases cannot be trapped from it's combustion.

UPS battery backup

Not everyone can afford a generator though and it might not be the ideal solution for you depending on your living arrangement. A smaller alternative might be to use an UPS battery backup. Typically used for computers and server hardware, these devices remain plugged into your necessary equipment and stay fully charged until the power cuts out. At which time they begin powering the device from their battery reserve. The ideal item to plug into your UPS is either your return pump if you're using a sump and it's not requiring excessive amounts of energy, or your power heads. Something which will recirculate water is the most important thing to have running during the power outage.

Air stones

UPS are not the cheapest devices either and may not be in your price range for a backup scenario. The next best option is going to be a battery operated air pump. While in a reef aquarium you normally wouldn't use an air stone, during a power outage it can provide great gas exchange and some decent water movement. These typically come in two variations. The kind which you must switch on to use, and those which switch on when the power cuts out. Penn Plax makes two of these models, the SAB10, which is manually operated and SAB11 which is automated by power outages. If you're going with the automated air pump you will need to place the air stone and air-line tubing somewhere in the aquarium at all times to get the benefit of the automated system. This could be unsightly or difficult to hide, so the manually operated pump may be a better option.

Manual Aeration

If worst comes to worst and you can't get a battery operated pump (though since you're reading this online hopefully you're not experiencing a power outage right now), there are other methods for recirculating the water. You do not need technology to keep the water moving. You can even just use a pitcher to scoop up water and dump it back into the aquarium creating some minor flow and gas exchange. While far from ideal, it can help you get by in a pinch.

Temperature

If you're in a very cold climate you may find yourself worrying about the drop in temperature. As long as the tank does not drop below 60F (15C) than the corals will most likely survive. You can however minimize the drop in temperature by trying to insulate the tank. This might mean wrapping insulating materials such as blankets or plastic around the tank to keep the heat in. It is important however that this does not impede and gas exchange in the tank, as that will become a bigger issue than the temperature drop. Using insulation around your plumbing can help decrease the rate at which the aquarium changes temperature and can be kept on all year around.

To recap what we have covered, the most important factor in the power outage is gas exchange in the aquarium. It doesn't matter what your methods are, but you need to get oxygen into the aquarium through some means of circulation. Temperature is usually secondary to this and isn't too much of a worry unless the power is out for extended durations. Finally lighting is not usually a concern unless the power is out for more than 3 days, after which photosynthetic organisms may begin to deteriorate. If you keep calm during the outage and do not do anything too drastic to the tank it should be fine, however any preparation you can do ahead of time will only benefit you when the power outage inevitably arrives.