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First Major Power Loss, What to Watch For??


Dave21

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So I'm running two tanks, one only a month or two old with 3 fish some crabs snails etc and the other has quite a few things, coral, inverts fish etc. And has been running over a year and a half. While out of town we lost power for 18hrs. A family member was able to put a battery bubbler in the old tank and the new tank being 90 gallon with only 3 fish scooped and dumped water several times to hopefully keep gas exchange going. 

 

We just got back and as far as fish, shrimp, conch and so on everything seems okay baring a few snails that are obviously upside down. It looks like the water got to around 60 degrees. The older tanks ammonia tested slightly high at 0.25 compared to the new tank. 

 

I dosed Seacham Prime in both tanks and am going to do a water change in both when the temp comes up and test Ammonia Nitrate and Nitrite morning and evening for the next week or so and pluck out any dead snails etc. 

 

Thankfully again it appears everything made it (waiting to see if the corals open up when the lights come on) but is there anything else I should watch for or do to avoid losing anything?

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Nano sapiens

Had a 22 hr. outage recently in my small nano recently with no losses, thankfully.  If you are interested, you can read about the methods I used (near the bottom):

 

 https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/172031-nano-sapiens-12g-ye-olde-mixed-reef/page/100/#comments

 

As for the aftermath, keeping system stress to a minimum to allow for recovery is essential, IMO.  Removing obviously dying or dead organisms ASAP would be #1.  At normal reef temperatures, the nitrifying bacteria should rebound swiftly from a cold spell and up their processing of ammonia (and later the coral and other sessile organisms as they 'get back in the groove').  Larger water changes can be helpful in diluting high ammonia levels as long as the water's parameters are very similar to the aquarium's parameters (otherwise it can also be a stress inducer).

 

 

 

 

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42 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

Larger water changes can be helpful in diluting high ammonia levels as long as the water's parameters are very similar to the aquarium's parameters (otherwise it can also be a stress inducer).

 

 

 

 

Thanks I'll definitely check that out. The snails I thought were dead appear to actually have been fine. The water is near up to temp now and they've come back. They initially were upside down not moving but now are climbing on the glass. 

 

As far ad ammonia I'm not 100% sure there is any. I was using an old API kit that was almost out and I've heard they sometimes show 0.25. I had a new one to replace it and the new one is measuring 0 so might be okay. 

 

Things are beginning to open up so I actually think I'm going to luck out and be okay. The only thing I'm not sure about is my new tank. 

 

It has a very sour smell to the water that reminds me of when you sniff a dead snail shell or the odor some corals put out when out of water. There is nothing in the tank accept some nassarious, hermits, and 3 fish. The water seems to test okay though so I'm not sure what is causing it. 

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Nano sapiens

Dead snails are real good at spiking ammonia, but since they are alive and kicking (and no other major die-off) in your system I personally wouldn't worry too much about ammonia at this point.

 

In my case, I just continued with my typical maintenance water change schedule after the outage and within a few short days all was back to normal.

 

60 F is below a tropical coral reefs' thermal minimum, but a system can tolerate and rebound from such a low temperature as long as the duration is relatively short (hours, not days).

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3 hours ago, Dave21 said:

As far ad ammonia I'm not 100% sure there is any. I was using an old API kit that was almost out and I've heard they sometimes show 0.25. I had a new one to replace it and the new one is measuring 0 so might be okay. 

Hope you don't need to go through this again, at least in this context.

 

But if you end up in any similar situation where you need to know about toxicity of ammonia, you need more than just the test kit's result....because that will just be for total ammonia.  Ammonia is not bad per se.  

 

Check this out...

 

image.png.3c86038c776864d7088e6aeb937f5b01.png

If you look at your tank temperature an pH at that time of the incident on this chart (from here), you get a multiplier.  

 

When the support systems lose power, it's normal for both temperature AND pH to drop.  

 

If we assume your pH was depressed to 7.2 at the time you were seeing 60ºF, that gives you a multiplier of .0046.  If my math is right, that would only mean 0.00115 ppm of toxic ammonia.

 

Even if pH was "perfect" at 8.0, you'd still get a calculated result of only 0.00715 ppm toxic ammonia.

 

If you were to bring up the temp and pH to "normal", you get a multiplier close to 0.1 or 0.025 ppm of toxic NH3.

 

Temperature and pH have a huge effect on (lack of) toxicity.

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You can easily check whether a snail is dead by smelling it. Live snails smell of saltwater and not much else. Dead snails smell of concentrated stench. Something about molluscs in general makes them rot really fast when they die- it's why you buy food oysters and clams still alive a lot of the time, because the line between "dead oyster you can safely eat" and "food poisoning in a shell" is very thin. 

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9 hours ago, Tired said:

You can easily check whether a snail is dead by smelling it.

Careful on the first sniff – test out the smell at 12" away and work your way closer. 😉 👃

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Ah, yeah, I always forget that part. I once found a half-full bottle of phyto that had been in the back of the closet somehow for a few months, and opened it to sniff up close and check whether it was the source of the odd smell. Yes it was, and no I should not have held it up to my face. 

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Thanks for the heads up lol the snails all came back when the temp came back to normal. 

 

I'm not sure what caused the odd smell in the big tank because I accounted for all the snails. I put some carbon in it and changed the sock every day and it's gone now. 

 

The coral, particularly the Xenia looked pretty rough Sunday after the power came back on and mcarrell you were right about the ph, even after temp came up both the ph and alkalinity were very low. I used some Seachem Reef Buffer to bring both back up and by Monday everything was full and as colorful as before. 

 

Totally surprises me how resilient saltwater Critters can be.

 

Thanks everyone for the helpful feedback. Definitely going to invest in a small generator to avoid this next time!

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You might have had some worms or something die off, or that might have been a lot of upset corals all giving off chemical upset-smells at once. Plenty of ways for a stink to make itself known around a reef tank. 

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