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| The chronicles of Sanjeev Dwivedi |
The storm was pretty bad and caused a lot of trees to get uprooted. As I came out of office on thursday, there were warnings that there would be a storm. At about 1:00am in the night, the power went off. I woke up in the morning to realize that the power was still not back. I waited almost the entire day for the power to be back. The power did not come back. Towards the evening, I realized that I had nothing that could be eaten directly. All I had was stuff that need to be cooked. So, I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of bagels (bread was out), peanut butter, cereal and some kiwis. I bought two candles. Then I realized that I did not have any means of lighting the candles. So, I asked the cashier if they had any ligthers. She only had a pack of six. I took it. Candles that cannot be lit are not very useful you know.
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| Toadstool coral (dying/dead) | Small cichlid | Yellow Tang |
After a meal of bagels with peanut butter and jelly I lit one of the candles and sat down. I was getting worried about my fish now. The freshwater tank is 85 gallons and houses 2 bala sharks, 3 clown loachse, 3 large plecos, one large goldfish, one small catfish, one corydora, two cichlids (one large and one small) and one bichir. These are all tropical fish and the temperature was plummeting. Apart from everythign else, with so many fish in the tank, I was afraid that the tank would run out of oxygen and that the fish will start dying.
In the saltwater tank (45 gallons), I had only one fish. Earlier I had a wrasse (he died after being moved twice) and a really big panther grouper (I gave it away to a fish shop as it was too big for my tank and would hurl the sand all over in the filter, skimmer and powerhead, effectively clogging them). Now all that was left was a yellow tang. I really love that guy. He (or she? don't know how to differentiate the sexes), is a active fish. As soon as I am in front of the tank, he would immediately come out and swim towards me and along with me as I move, begging for food. He has a dark yellow coloration and is just gorgeous to look at. I was not much concerned about the oxygen in the saltwater tank since there was only one fish, but the temperature was plummeting. I had bought two pieces of coral. One was a toadstool coral and another was a xenia elongata (soft coral). The toadstool was attached to some stony coral as well. The fish seemed to be doing fine but by saturday morning, the toadstool coral seemed to have snapped into two and its head was on the ground. The stony coral seemed to have died off to a large degree and the Xenia heads seemed to have shrivelled. Towards the noon, as the temperature reached close to 60F (The usual tank temperature is 79F) I saw that the tang was lying flat on its side, breathing laboriously. That concerned me greatly and putting all advise on the net regarding getting warm water from tap to a side, I got some warm water from the tap and mixed it with saltwater in a bucket. I measured the temperature to be two degrees above that of the tank. As soon as I netted the tang and put it in the warmer water, it jumped and reached the surface for air. Not a good sign, so I immediately netted it and put it back in the tank. It went for the surface. I hung my head in shame. I thought I had lost this beautiful specimen. But within few seconds, it swam to the bottom. Then putting all caution to wind, I directly added warm water in the tank. The tank temperature rose by two degrees and the tang seemed to be doing fine. So, I went to Home Depot to inquire about portable generators. They were all out.I paid a visit to Petco to see if they had any battery driven airstones but they were all out too. I came back home resigned to the fate of my fish. On the way, I saw two trucks with PSE marked on them. PSE = Puget Sound Energy, local power supply company. I drove to home overjoyed and sure enough, within ten minutes, power was back on.
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| Clown Loaches | Yellow Tang |
All in all, net loss as of now with the whole power outage episode = dollars 40 for the toadstool and stony coral + dollars 10 for the Xenia = dollars 50 net (assuming that they are dead and there is no hope of recovery.) I searched online and the advice seems to have a portable generator in such cases. Experts seem to be of the mind that in highly stocked aquaria, more than an hour without power can be disastrous. With my knowledge (or lack thereof), my aquaria sustained about 35 hours without power and seemed to come off with relatively low damage, but I am not sure I want this to happen again when I have more livestock.
Oh yeah, the tang has been moved twice and pulled through the outage like a champ. I confer him the degree of "Bahadur", which being a newly fangled degree, also becomes his name.
| sanjeev@pratapgarh.com |