Richard J Anderson

The big wind storm of December 2006 here in the Seattle area wiped out power to over 1 million people with the vast majority of them in the Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Woodinville areas. My house, along with 700,000 other Puget Sound Energy customers on the Eastside was dark for days. 8 Days to be exact during an average outside temperature of 35 degrees. The inside of my house dropped to 38 degrees in the end. I had just recently revived a leather coral that was not doing well in my 14 gallon reef tank but due to the power outage, the entire tank is wiped out. The water temperature dropped below 40 degrees after 4 days or so and stayed that low. Far lower than the 81 degree heated temp I keep it at.

I lost almost everything…
1 Orchid Dotty
1 Bicolor Blenny
1 Emerald Crab
1 Fire Shrimp
1 Cleaner Shrimp
6 Astrea Snails
5 Hermit crabs (blue leg, red leg)
3 star fish
20+ bristleworms ( I had no idea there was more than one )
1 finger leather coral
1 toadstool coral
1 xenia coral
3 separate colonies of star polyps
1 vermatid snail
3 feather dusters

The only thing that woke up when I powered up the heater and lights were the 10 nassarius snails. Talk about resilient.

I am going to be moving this month so aside from cleaning all the dead stock, I’ll be draining the water and moving the tank sometime soon. After a week or two for the tank to cycle again, I’ll begin to restock. Despite the loss I feel somewhat relieved because I was worried about how I was going to move the tank without killing all of the animals myself. This way I can’t blame myself. A UPS wouldn’t have lasted more than a few hours powering the heater and a pump, and if I had a generator I couldn’t have purchased any gas because none of the gas stations had power anyway. No one else had power so I couldn’t have moved the tank anywhere. I was basically stuck letting them die. It’s sad, my favorites were the blenny because he had a cool personality and the fire shrimp because his color was so bright.