Power outage - lesson learned

[reg828]

Last night we had a power outage. It happened while i was working in my tank, doing aquascaping as i wasnt satisfied with the aquascaping. while my hands were in the tank, suddenly lights went off. it was pitch black. it happened at 10:00pm. I was surprised but not worried because i never experienced here that the power outage last longer. however, it was my first experienced with power outage with tank. Here in oregon at this time it gets real cold at night. The tank temp can go down quickly. so, the most important thing in my mind is temperature. how am i going to at least maintain the temp. I thought, maybe i'll just wait and power may come back in few hours and my temp was at around 80 deg. so, waited, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00. no power yet!! oh man, i was really worried. I looked at the temp it went down to 76. I have to do something, first thing in my mind was "need hot water". so, I realized i can get some hot water in my tap water, and i was glad i bought tap water conditioner just two days ago. I felt relief after testing the hot tap water with my hands it was hot but not much. at least it could help slowly put temp up. so, i added about 10 gallons slowly at a time to 75 gal tank. that really helped put the temp up slowly and i really felt better. however, I really hesitant to put lots of tap water in there, but anyway i had to do something quick. the power outage lasted till 9:00 am in the morning. man, that was long, but i was glad i saved my tank and lessons learned. I also, didnt notice that we have a gas grill in the backyard, which i could have use to boil down water fast but too late for that and i didnt want to boil water out in the freezing cold and my neighbors would think i am nuts grilling in the morning outside freezing cold and thunderstorm. anyway, experiencing power outage was good because I learned somethings and will be prepared in the future. this i can say, we that have aquarium need to always have a back-up plan in case something like this happens. Does anyone have better plan in case of power outage?

[shag26272]

http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/I...D:100000192007


run a heater and a circulation pump from your car, its what I plan on setting up for hurricane season this year

[Blown 346]

Instead of pouring in new water, I use the water from the tank and get that to as close as 90 degress as possible and then dump back into the tank.
Also wrapping the tank in blankets will help keep the heat in.

[bruffin]

You could get a car battery and a power converter and use them as a generator. Run an air pump, heater, and something for circulation from the car battery until the power comes back on . . .
I made mine for under $60.