lesson learned the hard way !

["Yvan Alleau" <yalleau@coas.oregonstate.edu>]

Hi all,

Well I thought I would drop a few lines about one event that just happened
in my tanks lately.

As many of you have probably experienced as well, we had in Oregon a
snow/ice storms since last Sunday. One result has been about 9,000 Oregonian
without power. I was among them. Within 10 hours it was 42 F in the house:
quite a good insulation we have in there huh!

Anywoo.. The fish tank temperature dropped dramatically (<10 C) and fish
started to suffer. Based on the info obtained from our power company, the
current was to be reinstituted shortly: that is what we were told regularly
throughout the days. Well, of course I had to work and couldn't check on the
fish before the evening. As the results some died and other were in critical
conditions. Loosers have been: Nannochromis transvestitus and their fry,
wild A. pertensis and their fry, wild A. gibbiceps, Corydoras pigmaeus.
Interestingly, my A hogney (from Matt Crocker: nice fish Matt!) survived as
well as their newly swimming fry along with my A. borelli royal blue and
their fry. Go figure! The fish were so cold that they were immobile and
barely breathing. That was a pity to see the hypancistrus zebra and other
wild P. altums and royal blue discus that close to death.

When we got the power back on, I added extra heaters to warm them up and
like some magic trick they just went back to life.

 

Now, does anyone know about possible after-effects of such trauma on the
fish? Could the cold have damage some internal organs? Might they
prematurely die? 

 

One lesson though is that we all have valuable fish (on many levels) and it
appears now logical to me that we should have a back up system to provide
the energy required to keep them alive.  Generators are not that expensive
(especially used ones) and if you were to loose only 10 of your fish you
would have lost the money required to acquire a power generator.

I wonder how many of us have one. Probably those who do have a business
linked to fish and those who experienced power failure. Those of you who
have one and are not in these two categories: you made a smart investment!

 

I hope you and your fish are all doing great !

Have a great we

 

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