oscar keeping no electricity

Question
hi,
i have 2 oscars and plenty of other fish but im very worried because soon where im living the electricity will go off for a whole day! and im not sure what to do.....
can u suggest me in any solutions?


Answer
Hi Issac,
  I assume that you mean this will be a one-time occurrence, i.e., it will go for one day this one time (not that it goes off for a day at a time every few weeks or something like that).

  In general, your oscar should be fine.  If your tank is in good health, because you have been doing regular partial water changes (I recommend 25% of the water be changed once a week, every week), then you shouldn't have to do anything.  

  Do not do a major water change the day of or the day before the outage if you know exactly when it will be. The reason is that sometimes when you do a big water change on the tank it tends to stir things up and that can cause extra high oxygen consumption by the microorganisms in the tank.
The biggest problem with a power outage is that you won't have any air bubbling into the tank so you don't want it being consumed at an extra high rate.  

 Of course, if this happens in the middle of winter, you can have issues with the temperature of the tank dropping but it takes quite a while for a fish tank to cool down on
its own and a day usually won't affect it too much,
particularly if it is a larger tank.

-- Ron
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
  Cichlid Research Home Page <http://cichlidresearch.com>