Can corals survive in 50 degree water for days? Mine did

[stevel48]

This story goes back to first of the year when my wife and I went away for 5 days and came home to find our 10 gal nano at 50 degrees and about a gallon of water missing. (ATO failed) I have an inline heater and the water was so low the flow to the canister stopped. It had to be like this for at least 2 days.

So what lived? Deresa clam, zoos, hermits, box crab, porcelain crab, snails, limpets, 2 brain corals, mushrooms, sponges, tunicates, various polyps, acro's etc. Everything is doing well. it took about a week for the clam to get straight but he did.

What died? a small ricordia

 

[afboundguy]

Glad to hear everything made it... A lot of horror stories after the power outages from the ice storms...

 

[Aquadiva]

I think it depends on how long it was at that temperature. I lost two tanks in the basement when the power was out for 5 days.

Glad to hear your corals made it, though.

 

[fishindude]

Wow, that is a cool story. Glad to hear everything made it! (except the ricordea)

 

[stevel48]

power going out..my worst nightmare as a reefer in NE

 

[Doherty]

Suprised to hear that..... i figured everything would have died, even if was at that temp for a short time.

 

[stevel48]

i wonder if storms ever sweep into the tropics lowering the temp like that.

 

[Joel A]

it would have to be a record storm... that's for sure.

Maybe lower the temp a little bit... but think about how cold it would have to be, and for how long in order to get an oceans temperature down from 80 degree to 50, or even 60 degrees. It's freezing here in NE all the time, and the oceans temperature does fall slowly and gradually over time.. but it's still always warmer than the air around it.