What did you do with your tank(s) today?

fishguy1978

Legendary Member
Water change on the 55g planted and moved a female and male rainbow into private quarters. I think they had started to spawn as there were some eggs on one of the rocks in the tank.
 

DMD123

Administrator
Staff member
Contributing Member Level III
Been researching battery air pumps to try and find better quality ones. Seems some of the bait fishing ones rate really well. I currently have Azoo which are very loud and a Penn Plax plug in with a battery back up which I really like but it uses 4 batteries, has two outlets and is pretty quiet but about $35 in cost. I ordered a Uniclife brand on Amazon to compare ($9.87).

Im prepping for future issues by getting a large pack of D batteries (12 pack), more air stones, air line and of course battery air pumps. Looking into a small portable generator also. This is not my first power outage living in my current home for apx. 5 years now but this has been the longest at almost 24 hours without power.
 

master chi

Member
I bought two at petco a few days back. $13.30 a piece. I lost power for about 12 hours. I never got to use the emergency pumps. I had a schumacher 1200peak amp station. I plugged into that an AC70 and ran that for several hours. Based on what was left on that battery. I estimate it could have run for 14 hours on that power inverter. That thing saved my fish for sure. Since my 75 gallon is all mbuna,it's overstocked. They would have been gasping fairly quick. My 125 is way understocked. I only keep a harem of Venustus in there. I didn't do anything to that tank. That's why I went out and bought the emergency pumps. Since then I've done water changes to both tanks though.
 

sir_keith

Legendary Member
Contributing Member Level III
I almost always lose power at my current home during winter windstorms, but this one spared me. However, friends on Bainbridge were without power for two days.

My worst experience with a power outage was the Hanakkah Eve windstorm of 2006. I lived on Mercer Island at the time, and was without power for six days. I had no generator, but my fish room did have a wood-burning stove, so I could keep that one room warm. I covered all the tanks (~20 at that point) with heavy blankets and hoped for the best. Even so, I lost many fishes, including a whole colony of Tropheus sp. Ikola in my living room show tank. It was terrible. Afterwards I looked into getting an emergency generator, but it was a 50-year old house, and that project would have required some extensive (and expensive) rewiring.

My current home is entirely electric- I even need power to have running water- so I soon bought bought a medium-sized emergency generator. You can get great deals on these sometimes at the Home Depot if you keep your eyes open; I got this one for about $500 (normally ~$1100) a few years ago; it runs on gasoline or propane-

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At first I just ran extension cords into my fish room, which worked, but was a PITA. Eventually I had the house hard-wired for the generator- no big deal this time- and just recently I installed a dedicated propane tank to fuel the generator. I can run my whole house except for the heat with this setup, and if I have power to run the fan in my wood-burning fireplace, I can even heat the main wing reasonably well. Even if I never use this setup again (which would be fine with me), I figure it's more than worth it just for the peace of mind. So I guess the bottom line here is that even if you just start out with a small generator and a bunch of extension cords. you won't have to worry about losing your fishes. :)
 
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Modest_Man

Well-Known Member
Generator + wood burning stove in the shop kept all my tanks without power for 36 hours. Getting up every 3 hours at night to add fuel to the stove was the worst part. My shop (wood burning stove) with the fish was warmer than the house (pellet stove).
 

Madness

Well-Known Member
Staff member
IMG_20210116_081306_425.jpg Well not today but yesterday big water change day, added some pothos to my sump and to some of the tanks. Also took a few pics (actually a lot of pics but only a few turned out. Sorta) if the room and tanks.

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DMD123

Administrator
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Contributing Member Level III
Sunday morning water change day. Started with the 300 this morning and will work on garage tanks later.

Today I should receive my battery air pump from Amazon. One of the better priced at $9.87, rated for 30 gallons. If it is half way decent, then I will order two more and pretty much be set to handle an outage on all my tanks for at least a couple days if temperature does not go too low.
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Also got a 12 pack of D batteries and ordered some airstones off Kens. A bit of peace of mind until I find a generator or some other method to power up equipment.
 

DMD123

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Nothing planned today except waiting for a Penn Plax battery pump to come in from Amazon. Will test this one out and compare to the others I have tried or am currently running.

Yesterday I did water changes and stopped at Martin Henry’s to pick up a fish that @lloyd378 inspired me with. I think we determined it was a 3 spot gourami, thanks to @ShortyKiloGyrl
 

Modest_Man

Well-Known Member
@Modest_Man, So what did you get? Did you decide to start up a little community tank?

Technically my order came yesterday, I was just lazy.

Sajica, myrnae, cutteri, salvini, sagittae, tinfoil barbs, cories, some swordtails, platys, and a couple raphael catfish. They were out of the loaches I wanted.

Salvini, sagittae, and tinfoils will end up as sacrificial dithers in the 400 gallon when they get some size on them. Sajica, myrnae, and cutteri will get their own 40 breeders. Going to work on a low tech planted tank for the livebearers and cories. The swordtails were supposed to be 1M + 2F but I got 5M and 1F of 1 variety which sucks. I've got a lead on a pair of nanoletua that I need to go pickup, and I want to order some marbled convicts.
 

DMD123

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Contributing Member Level III
Pulled out my large spiderwood in my 65B community, cleaned it and caught the 3 rescue black kuhli loaches and donated them to Martin Henry’s. I thought that the stress of taking out the Raphael cats hide for a bit and netting the fish out would stress him out even worse since he was on a hunger strike. Well apparently it didn’t bother him at all and it ate bloodworms like it was going out of style. I fed very heavy and turned lights off and he was going at it. Glad he decided to eat again!
 

fishguy1978

Legendary Member
Feed a frozen medley of brine, blood worms and mysis. Rinsed some gravel and added it to the 29g with the Rainbow pair. The bare bottom was stressing them.
 

DMD123

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Contributing Member Level III
Feed a frozen medley of brine, blood worms and mysis. Rinsed some gravel and added it to the 29g with the Rainbow pair. The bare bottom was stressing them.
Ive never had success with bare bottom tanks. Ive seen fish act strange like they want to swim deeper or something. Even just a small handful of substrate thrown over the surface and they improved behavior. Ive always wanted to try a tile bottom but dont like the thought of waste getting trapped under the tiles. If I silicone them in place and sealed then it wouldnt be so bad.
 

DMD123

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Contributing Member Level III
Still super nervous about my plant keeping. Noticed some of the new anubias having issues but still plenty of healthy looking ones. A plant I wasnt so sure on, my Java Fern, seems to be happy with new babies emerging from it.
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sir_keith

Legendary Member
Contributing Member Level III
Ive never had success with bare bottom tanks. Ive seen fish act strange like they want to swim deeper or something. Even just a small handful of substrate thrown over the surface and they improved behavior. Ive always wanted to try a tile bottom but dont like the thought of waste getting trapped under the tiles. If I silicone them in place and sealed then it wouldnt be so bad.

What worked for me with bare bottom yanks was to paint the bottom black, on the outside, of course. :)
 

sir_keith

Legendary Member
Contributing Member Level III
Still super nervous about my plant keeping. Noticed some of the new anubias having issues but still plenty of healthy looking ones. A plant I wasnt so sure on, my Java Fern, seems to be happy with new babies emerging from it.
View attachment 7642

Sometimes Anubias take a while to adapt to new water parameters. Give it time...
 

DMD123

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Went to the store and stocked back up on frozen foods, had to get bloodworms, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp and krill. Lots of treats for the next couple months.
 

DMD123

Administrator
Staff member
Contributing Member Level III
Not sure if my Raphael catfish is fattening up but it seems to be more active since the blood worm feeding it had. I tried mysis shrimp yesterday on it. Cant tell if it ate them but tank is clean so something ate them. Going to try frozen brine shrimp today. Apparently this catfish is not a pellet eater so I am trying the treats to get it healthy.
 
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