No backup plan is perfect. I’d have gone solar except where I am in CT there are too many trees. Cannot even grow vegetables .... not enough direct sun. You’re right about the fuel. Last time we had a protracted power outage I was getting mighty low on propane. Trees down meant the trucks couldn’t get through. Plus demand was so great that the wait list was days long. Fortunately the power came back before the propane ran out.
That is why you use an additive. You also cycle the gasoline. This is easy to do. Fill car up with old gas use it and put new gas in can add stabilizer ... done.
You run the gennys every 6 months for maintenance and such. Some do this more often.
And if you read my post you will see that I said that it made more sense to set up a whole house situation if you were going solar. Solar as a backup solution really really sux.
I have lived in plenty of cold climates, I grew up in Idaho. For me the weather wasn't bad no. I have walked to school in colder. That said this was indeed a disaster, because TX hasn't seen this kind of cold weather in 122 years. The reason the infrastructure failed is because it wasn't planned for. Once again, the unexpected is what caused the disaster and then it created a chain of events that made things worse.
The mainstream media is asking why the equipment wasn't cold weather prepped. The governor and other political leaders in Texas ,bought out by the fossil fuel companies, are blaming renewable energy like frozen windmills when it was the gas and coal that failed.
Yes, the last freeze like this i remember in Houston happened in Dec '96 and lasted about 4 days and took the power out for maybe a day. Nothing had come close since until this past week.
Did the xenia survive?The Texas winter storms left us for 3 days without power.
I call myself lucky. Next winter season I will have a power backup.
The water temperature in the tank dropped to 45 F.
The room temperature had dropped to a cozy 40 degrees.
I had wrapped the tank with several layers of blankets and put multiple towels on the top cover.
1 day after warmup I find the following:
4 clown fish, 2 cardinals, a watchman goby and a neon goby survived.
They moved a bit sluggish at first but after a few hours of warm water they ate and are back to their usual behavior.
My red fire shrimp looks like he went through a blender. His antennas are bend and he hasn’t left the spot I found him. But he’s moving.
Pistol shrimp is fine.
My long tentacle anemone moved from an open space to a deeper sand bed between rocks.
Tuxedo urchin and pencil urchin moving fine.
My serpent start fish is fine too. He had moved into one of my pistol shrimps deep caves.
Only to be kicked out by the pistol shrimp after the water warmed up.
All the trochus snails survived. Cerites are gone. Have not seen the nassarius yet
Looks like a few hermits are gone.
Most of the soft corals survived. First totally limp but now standing up.
Kenia tree, daisy polyp, gas, hammer head and toadstool seem to come back.
My finicky toadstool starts to show its tentacles. He gets upset with me every time I put my hand into the water then he retreats for several days.
Questions:
1- should I do a water change and infuse new bacteria? Or do the beneficial bacteria survive those temperatures?
2- should I wait and see if the Xenia comes back or take it out? See pic below.
3 - anything I should watch out for?
my Xenia seems a goner .....
Yeah, I feel for you guys - after a similar but milder event 10 years ago it sounds like they made recommendations to upgrade the infrastructure but they were never followed. I'm sure someone decide they could save a few bucks because "hey, what're the odds it'll happen again?"
www.reef2reef.com
curious you had such heavy losses - what were your 8 fish? I assume delicate things.
Not really. I kept the temp from going lower, but the first outage was 14 hours., second and third about 12 hours, then a couple at 9 hours, then 6 hours, 3 hours off and finally stable...it's a bit blurry at this point. I think possibly all my corals affected teh O2 some? My tank is packed with corals. Fish lost: Flame Angel, Flame Hawk, Mandarin goby pair, 3 Allen's damsels, Purple Pseudo. However, JUST saw my female mandarin tonight finally so I guess only 7 lost. 210g mainly SPS with some colonies beyond 12" diameter.
