I was writting a warning sign to go near the power outlet that I have Cobys air pump and heater connected to so when im out switch twitching grandmothers dont feel tempted to try save a lil juice, when the though dawned on me, what happens in a power cut? wrap the tank in a blanket to keep in the heat? get a back up generator or something? lol I mean Ive seen here some of you guys have multiple, what I would call very serious set ups with some exotic and beautiful fish, is this an issue?

Just try to maintain heat in the tank, most hardy tropical fish can stand a lower temp for a while. Yes, some people do have backup generators but if worst comes to worst, bag up your fishes and put them under your jumper :lol:

:lol: Sam, I could just imagine someone doing that :lol:

We were without power for 5 Days when the Big Storm hit last year, Fish coped OK, ended up going out to buy a generator after 3 days, didn't lose any Fish.

Not sure how I would have got on if I had my Discus way back then though :-?

Dont have to worry about that now, have had the generator wired into the Mains, so all I have to do now is Flick a switch over to generator and were all up and running again :bounce:

I guess the tempreture would fall slowly too so they would have time to adjust I guess, but its not like you can give em a cuddle to keep em warm, squishy fishies

Well NO not really :lol:

Wrapping the Tank up in a couple of Duvet Inners will keep it warm for a while.

We could never convince my grandmother that electricity didn't dribble out of the switch if it was left switched on with nothing plugged into the outlet :roll:

Tanks will drop their heat quite slowly. Make sure the filter media stays wet and throw a duvet or similar over the tank and all should be fine. Or, if you have a wood burner, keep it going to keep the room warm.

we've only had short ones touch wood, but i put duvets on all the tanks to keep them warm and they don't loose more than 1-2 degrees over a few hours

If your filter is without power for more than a few hours disconnect it and give it a good rinse out before the power comes back on. The lack of oxygenated water flow over it will kill the bacteria and when the power comes back on it will blow nasty water into your tank. Its not as big a problem with internal filters because he oxygenated water will still move around to a small degree without the power on.

We could never convince my grandmother that electricity didn't dribble out of the switch if it was left switched on with nothing plugged into the outlet :roll:

....

Aaawww my dear old grandma began to misplace her marbles after my grandad died. I went to live with her and she would turn off any lights that I turned on. She would sneak up the dark passageway, reach into my room and switch off the light when I was studying! Nothing I could say would persuade her that I needed the light on!

One night I was having a shower and I knew she would come and turn the light off while I was in there, so I jammed a chair up against the bathroom door (the lock had been removed as she had locked herself in there once). I heard her try to open the door, but smirked to myself because I knew she couldn't get in. A few minutes later the light went off! She had gone to the fuse box and used a knife to pull all the fuses out one by one! :lol:

Needless to say, I installed a padlock on the fuse box after that, and very soon Granny had to go and live in a place where they could look after her better than I could.

Oh how I loved my dear old Grandma!

Theres a great article on MFK about dealing with power outages (long ones)

Im not sure it applies to small fish as much, but a battery powered air pump is most often the difference in the fish surviving and not surviving.

As for the filter, all you have to do is remove the media and float them in the tank. keep the media alive, and the battery powered airpump keeps some oxygen exchange going - the other option is every hour remove a bucket of water and put it back in...

There apparently are airpumps that run like a normal one and then switch over to battery power when the power fails.