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Hurricane Sandy- 10 Days without Power

Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:58 pm
by wu19
10/29/12-11/7/12. I like to start off with yes, I was not prepared... when I should have been concerning my little zebras. I live by myself so I guess in my head I was just use to worrying about if anything happens ill just leave. That being said. Being a Dpw worker didn't help my little guys either because instead of being there when my lights when out, I was working. On 10/29/12 Sandy hit Nj. My power when out that night. I got out of work at 1:30am on 10/30/12. To wake up at 6:00am checked my water it was at 73 degrees. I then took a pot and took water from the tank and began pouring it back in from a decent height for air. I punch into work at 7:00 am. I'm starting to worry bc I am not prepared and already I'm seeing the destruction Hurricane Sandy has done on the businesses. No one was open.. The chaos has begun. That whole day after finding everyone is k my main concern was my zebras. My friend luckily lend me his inverter on 10/30/12 and I had a spare car battery. I didn't get home until 11:00pm temp at this point was in the 60s. I connected the heater and filter. The battery lasted til 5:00am on 10/31/12. I woke up then I checked the temp and it was rising slowly, I kept taking water out of the tank and pouring it back in. Had to go to work and was starting to think everything would be ok if I get another battery. So I got another car battery on 10/31/12. That lasted me 4-5 hours and temp started to go down rapidly. This is on 10/31/12 at night. I'm starting to panick at this point. Everything is electric in my apartment stove included. All night I was taking water out and pouring it back in. I then went to work on 11/1/12 very worried, angry at myself I just received my females the week before and now my abides are dying. I carried both batteries with me to see if I could charge then up and went home that night with a total of 3 batteries. My co-worker gave me the 3rd one. That worked for the first couple of nights but by 11/3/12 the batteries were not not holding the charge . None of the 3. Now I haven't slept in days I'm getting real frustrated calling for battery operated pumps etc... My co-worker lend me another inverters, it was 200 watts that plugs into a ciggerette lighter. Between that and charging the car batteries at work lead me to burning out my friends inverter and getting fed up and and finally waking up to to water being so cold that I had to call my friend who just got his light back on to pick me up at 4:30 am bc the water was so cold. I picked them up a couple of days ago.
I might of left a couple of things out here and there, excuse me. I barely slept. At times I was disoriented with the frustrations at the gas line, and trying to find any thing open to eat while at work. A huge Thank You to Rod47... Thanks again brother for your help. The female is hanging around the males cave. :) I can only hope. He is sticking his tale out and twitching at her.

Re: Hurricane Sandy- 10 Days without Power

Posted: Tue Nov 13, 2012 2:37 pm
by TwoTankAmin
I went through a mini=- emergency with zebras in 2007. I had purchased a breeding colony of 13 and 5 fry in April of 06. I had been amazingly lucky to have them start spawning like mad within a couple of weeks. By early 07 I had close to 100 zebras plus my 15 other tanks of fish. I also care for a mother in her 90s with dementia. After years of living through power outages while listening to our neighbor's generators, we bit the bullet and put in a whole house backup system. We were fortunate to be able to afford this.

However, while the gennie was sitting outside the house in April waiting for the electricians to wire it and for the 500 gal propane tank to be installed etc. we had a 25 hour blackout. Fortunately I had several battery powered air pumps I could rotate from tank to tank to keep the gas exchange going in tanks. The biggest issue for me, as for you, was temperature. My solution then was to remove tank water to a pot and then heat it on our gas grill outside and return it to the tank.

What you should consider doing is once this stuff all shakes out is to buy a small gas powered generator that will supply enough electricity for a few tanks. This should not set you back a huge amount and could prove invaluable when the next one hits. Between last year and this recent storm we had 3 outages of 5, 5 and 13 days (this doesn't include several shorter outages of a day or two). Our generator saved us and my fish. All I can say is the cost of moving to a hotel for 4 people, the loss of the freezer and fridge contents and the loss of fish would have far exceed the cost of our unit.

I am about 40 miles NNE of NYC and had I know of your plight I would have offered to house some of your fish. I am not sure where either of us would have found gasoline to transport them, but that is another issue. During this last storm I had 20 tanks all running fine due to our backup gennie.

Re: Hurricane Sandy- 10 Days without Power

Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2012 7:51 am
by Rod47
I’m really happy to hear that all your efforts during the blackout caused by Sandy, which are truly amazing by the way, had a happy ending with all the zebra plecos surviving! Maybe they will demonstrate their appreciation by doing more than just showing an interest in each other. Sounds like they may be thinking along those lines! You might think the ordeal would put them out of the mood for a long time, but I had one male that proved just how single minded a male can be. He had just finished raising a group of fry to the point of their leaving the cave in a breeding tank, and I decided to take everything out of the tank so I could fish out a number of fry from different spawns. I removed all the layered rock and driftwood and moved him (still in his cave) to a smaller tank while catching the fry. It took most of the day before I got to the point of being able to put everything back, including him (still in his cave), into the tank. Four days later he spawned again. I wish you luck….you and so many others on the East coast sure deserve some after going through all that.

Re: Hurricane Sandy- 10 Days without Power

Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 9:21 pm
by duonri
Wu19 - my empathy !!!
I hope your Zebras are better now.

Re: Hurricane Sandy- 10 Days without Power

Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 9:46 pm
by wu19
Thank you. Only my 2 males survived :( . I recently purchased 5.