i hope this never happens again!

[sunfishman]

today our electricity went out for two and a half hours. i was runn ing back and fourth manually oxygenating the water in the tanks by aggitating it. man, i hope this dosent happen again for a lOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG time.

[Rue]

I hate when that happens.

But 2 hours isn't very long - you should be okay...even without aerating manually...

[Aeonflame]

The battery powered airpumps are a great investment. You can find them at any good lfs

[lobsternoob]

I lost a buncha fish a few weeks back when we had a 3 day outage, I wouldn't worry too much about 2 hours :) unfortunately my portable power source just didnt cut it for 3 days.

[Northernguy]

My power was out for 8hrs the other day.Any longer and i would have worried.
My fish were fine! None were hanging out near the surface at all.Thats usually a good sign that your tank is low on oxygen.

[sunfishman]

i wasnt somuch worried about the fish, but my tanks are in different rooms so i was running all over the place. i only airated at all then because some of my darters are the canaries in the mine, so to speak. they are sensitive!

[Lady Hobbs]

Tanks can generally go several hours with filters off. Just last week my power was out for 12 hours without incident. Another time 21 hours. What you should never do is blow into the tank thru a straw or hose, tho, as you are blowing in toxins from your own lungs. Best to just draw out a pail of water and rapidity pour the water back into the tank to cause some surface turbulance. I had no deaths either time with mine.

[Tetris]

What you should never do is blow into the tank thru a straw or hose, tho, as you are blowing in toxins from your own lungs.

Also remember that you exhale co2 :11:

[Scrup]

plus fish dont tolerate bad breath nearly as well as people do.