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Thursday, January 19, 2012

4 Days Power Outage

This is a little story we'd like to share with everyone. Some people may have the same experience, how is your story?

The Halloween of 2011 was the worst one I had ever experienced. An early snow storm along the east coast of USA caused over 2 million power outage. And we were one of them, so were our shrimp tanks. It's incredibly amazing that they survived after four days power outage. This is truly a miracle to us.

We were not at home during Saturday morning and got back home late around midnight. Our place doesn't have very good insulated structure, and there's chilly wind coming in from little gap of widows and doors. At the time we got back home, water temperature of tanks was about 70. We keep tank temperature around 75, this was sudden 5 degree temperature dropped down. Good news was that shrimps were fine and still active. The most important thing we could do now was to prevent heat loss as possible. We sealed up all gaps to prevent chilly wind coming in, which would take away lots of heat. The first night was over, safely. Temperature dropped only a little bit. Daytime was fine, that's very nice bright sunny day, and not so cold outside. We went to all stores as possible and hunted for any kind of indoor non-electric powered warmer,, but nothing available. We were so disappointed. Nothing we could do, and the cold dark night came again. The only thing we had at home was propane stove, outdoor use. We burn it for only about two hours, during the coldest time at night, 2:00 am, and the early morning, around 6, hoping this little heat could have little effect. After the second night, shrimps were still fine and active. Tank's temperature was above 65. We did the same thing for the third night, but the  temperature dropped below 65, and shrimps started to slow down. This was not a good sign. Every night, we hoped that the power could be back next minute. Towns next to us had power back already. Then it's the forth night, Tuesday night,  temperature of tanks was about 60. Shrimps had reach their limit, most of them just stayed quietly. We almost felt no more hope.. and suddenly,, the power's back!!


This is a great experience,, And luckily, we went over it safely. we know how great capability those shrimps are. We figure out that one important reason that contributes to the great health condition of those shrimps may be the new beneficial microorganisms we add to water.  And the greatest news is that the surprise Crystal black shrimp brought to us --- baby black king kongs,, they all survived. It is about two and half months after they were born, they have grown to 1cm. The grow rate of bkk/rw is much more slower than regular crs, but it is great that they grow up healthily!




1 comment:

NineXTail said...

Keep a big pot of water boiling on a portable gas stove close to the tank would had helped. As much as you love these little guys, you might want to think about getting a APC UPS big enough that can power a small aquarium heater for 3 days.