a few questions:

[Angie]

Ok, so this is my fist tank. I definetly have learned a lot! Anyways, I have wondered what would happen if the power goes off? Are the fish surviving off the oxygen produced with the filter turning the water or what? I thought they were supposed to have "bubbles" of some sort, but at the fish store I was told the air stone was more of a decoration even though it does put more oxygen in the water. Then you have those fish you see sitting just in bowls! I guess it has me confused, what exactly do they need as far as this stuff goes?

Angie

 

[Bonochick]

The biggest thing I worry about if the power goes out is that the temperature of the water could drop dangerously low, since the heater won't work. 

Air stone isn't just for decoration, it provides oxygen.  That's good for aquariums that have a small surface area.  I don't have air stone in my tank, but I have good surface area, and my filter has a nice "waterfall" action going on that produces bubbles (I have a 110 filter in a 29 gallon).  Usually if fish are struggling to get oxygen, they will hang out at the surface and gasp for air. 

 

[Amnagrla]

As far as the power going off.... I have a 10 gallon tank with a 120 V filter, a bubling clam, and a bubble wand. Yes, they add O2 to the water to help the fish...however, I almost found out the hard way... You know how you clean your tank? A syphon system.. That's what all these tubes turn into if you lose power. I live at school and occasionally we will lose power. THANKFULLY, the day before I had stopped at the LFS and picked up a a connector piece to go to my air pump. My air pump has only 1 output, the thing I bought has 5 I think. So I plugged everything in, and just by LUCK it has an anti-syphon ball inside each of the tubes so I won't end up with 10 gallons of water all over my floor and a bunch of dead fish!

So there you go, something you can do incase of power failure. The other thing I worry about as well is the heater. I'm not even sure what I would do if the power went out for a long time!

 

[bbfeckawitts]

Put a heavy blanket over the tank, it will keep it warm. My tanks temp dropped less than 1 degree F in 8 hours this way when the power was out.
Brianna

 

[Bonochick]

Cool tip, Brianna, I'll have to remember it.  Where we live, the joke is that every time the wind blows, the power goes out.  It made me kind of nervous when we moved there, but it really hasn't been THAT terrible.  We have had a few not very fun times without power, but we haven't had to deal with it since we got our aquarium. Lucky so far!

 

[COBettaCouple]

we run our air thru gang valves (sounds like you got a gang valve, amnagrla?) and have tested the pumps all for power loss by unplugging them for a bit to check for the water syphon effect. Briana's suggestion of a blanket is great and we would just leave a corner open for the betta tanks. There's also a battery backup air pump that we might get when we have the extra money in case of a long term power outage due to hurricanes.