The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread

A few months ago I had a power failure which caused a crash due to high nitrates. I lost my shrimp and two fish. I did an emergency water change but the salinity ended up much lower because the indicator in my floating hygrometer had slipped, causing bad readings. The remaining fish recovered quickly. The coral got stressed but are doing all right now. I keep the tank at 1.023. You can check your hygrometer quickly using pure water = 1.000.

[Blueface]

Originally Posted by BC-Axeman

A few months ago I had a power failure which caused a crash due to high nitrates. I lost my shrimp and two fish. I did an emergency water change but the salinity ended up much lower because the indicator in my floating hygrometer had slipped, causing bad readings. The remaining fish recovered quickly. The coral got stressed but are doing all right now. I keep the tank at 1.023. You can check your hygrometer quickly using pure water = 1.000.

Short term power failures generally can be survived well via air stones.
Use many of them, not just one.
Oxygen, or better yet the lack thereof, is the biggest killer, not the chemistry.
In Florida, that is a regular occurrence for us.
I now have a generator that is dedicated to my tank and my tank only.

Something I learned that worked well prior to having the generator is the "manual" filtration method. You basically manually circulate water from the tank, via the filtration system. I would pull water from the wet dry sump and dump back it in the tank, causing water from the tank to flow back down to the wet dry, where the bacteria was, mainly to keep that bacteria from crashing. When power was restored, the tank would clear up within hours.