# Power Out, filters off, lost a fish



## TorontoBoy (Mar 14, 2013)

The power unexpectedly went out for 5 hours here in Scarborough. Of course we could not plan for this. It was eerily quiet with the Aquaclears not humming.

I lost a black and white platy, discovered when I went to prime and start the AC. Goldfish, tetras, and cats were all Ok though.

Did anyone else lose fish?


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## fesso clown (Nov 15, 2011)

Sorry to hear about your loss. 
You can get an "Elininator" from Canadian tire in different sizes to run heaters and pumps. 
Check it out, the 800 amp hour one is on sale right now:
http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4/Auto/SolarPortablePower/PowerPacks/PRDOVR~0112014P/MotoMaster+Eliminator+800A+Powerbox.jsp?locale=en


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

My basement flooded waist deep and I lost about 4 grand worth of fish equipment and 5 grand worth of music recording equipment. In all honesty, i feel like I may just quit. I LITERALLY have to start from the start.


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## GAT (Oct 8, 2011)

omg that sucks. Sorry to hear that.


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## characinfan (Dec 24, 2008)

Holy cow, kimchi. So sorry.


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## TorontoBoy (Mar 14, 2013)

Kimchi24 said:


> My basement flooded...


Do you have home owner's insurance? Does it cover floods? You might be covered.


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

TorontoBoy said:


> Do you have home owner's insurance? Does it cover floods? You might be covered.


unfortunately my mother doesn't want her premium to go up so shes not claiming anything.


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Ugh! I am so sorry you guys! D:


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

I would assume there is more damaged than just your stuff, things like furnace, hot water heater, electrical. Any wood framing would rot, mould. There can be thousands of dollars worth of damage that you don't even know about. I would do a claim and have an inspection done. Well worth the possible few bucks a month extra for insurance.

Without a good inspection, you may have problems you won't even realize for a few months.

Tell her you will pay any difference in insurance costs if that will do it.


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## Letigrama (Jul 6, 2008)

Im so sorry that sucks big time. A lot of insurance companies wont cover flood that is cause from sewers and rainstorms floods. They will cover for sewer back up if you had that added and will cover if there is main pipe or your water heater etc. But not for rain flood. Is always good to know what you are covered for in your policy. Also we have a limits for pets of 300-500 so if theres a fire and you lost 3 Grant on fish don't you dream the insurance company will pay for it. You need pet insurance.... omg! So we are on our own with this investment, fyi


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## TorontoBoy (Mar 14, 2013)

Insurance is for catastrophic events, and Sunday's flood qualifies. Toronto has never had this amount of rainfall in one day.

As Pyrrolin started saying, you must try to change your mum's mind. If you have a finished or partially finished basement then all the wood studs, drywall and insulation needs to be removed or mould will grow and be a long-term health hazard to all occupants of the house. All furniture and cushions, books and other items that absorb water simply cannot dry out fast enough to not mould in this heat. Insurance companies have mould abatement companies that can save clothing and specific other items by cleaning them a specific way. All these repairs will quickly add up.

If the insurance company is willing to look at your claim you could easily hit $20-30k in repairs, so increasing your house premium, usually much cheaper than auto insurance, is well worth the increase. This is how insurance works.


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## Scotmando (Jul 10, 2011)

Kimchi24 said:


> unfortunately my mother doesn't want her premium to go up so shes not claiming anything.


So sorry to hear of your flooding issue

I would advise you to call the insurance. The average basement flood damage is $25,000 - $35,000.

Like pyrrolin says, it's worth it.

Mold in your basement will start in as little as 24hrs. and is a serious health hazard for you & your Mom.

I would get this addressed right away.


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## Shrimp Daddy (Mar 30, 2013)

Kimchi24 said:


> My basement flooded waist deep and I lost about 4 grand worth of fish equipment and 5 grand worth of music recording equipment. In all honesty, i feel like I may just quit. I LITERALLY have to start from the start.


Did any fish escape?


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I feel so badly for everyone who had basement floods. Less than 20 minutes after the rain began, I was watching a whitewater river run down Queen Frederica Dr, [ I'm on the 10th floor, so for me, thankfully, only the power failure to cope with] across Dundas and on down, also running east on Dundas. Building south of me looked as though it was sitting in the middle of a lake.

I can only imagine how many basements were flooded just in this area alone. I saw a guy get swept off his feet and swished through the intersection at Dundas St on his butt, while a big truck tried to drive through and nearly ran him down.

It's a false economy not to claim the insurance, because it is not just the stuff you had in your basement, it is the STRUCTURE of your basement. Wood, drywall, carpet, the wiring, all those things can be severely damaged or completely ruined, and anything will grow mould in no time. You can have terrible health problems breathing moulds. You can also have walls or ceilings fall down, either from direct wetting or extreme humidity for too long. With this humidity we're having, nothing is going to dry out any time soon.

The insurance premium may go up if you claim, but that is much less costly than having to pay out of pocket for extensive flood repairs. It's not the same as deciding not to claim for the cigarette burn in the carpet, because those kind of claims will bump your premium far more than is worth it. But for this kind of thing, it's worth finding out what coverage you have and claiming what you can.

Pet insurance is worth looking into, though I don't know how it applies to fish and shrimp, only cats, dogs and horses. Unless the pet is purebred or valuable in some other way, mostly you only get a token payment for death or loss, but various veterinary treatments will be covered. It depends on what level of coverage you have.

I know you can get riders on a house policy to cover damage from a fish tank breaking or leaking. It's much the same as coverage for a freezer that fails, so you won't be out for the food losses. These riders are not expensive at all, sometimes just a few dollars more on the house policy per year. It should be part of the ongoing budget for anyone keeping tanks. If you live with parents and are old enough to be working, you should be paying for such a rider to cover that kind of thing. If you live in a basement apartment you need coverage against literally losing your place to live. If I had all my fish in the basement, I'd sure want to know how I could protect that investment against this kind of disaster. Even having the power out for just a couple of days would have a drastic effect on a lot of tanks, so a backup power system is worth looking into as well. Fortunately, pumps and filters, for the most part, don't draw a lot of power.

Not being in the insurance business, I don't know just what you can get to cover external flood waters doing damage to tanks, their living contents or the supporting equipment, but if I were living in a house, it is something I would certainly find out asap. I know that what the insurance industry calls 'Acts of God' are usually not covered, nor are damages from acts of war, but flood insurance and earthquake insurance does exist. No idea how much it costs, but again, worth investigating.

There was a flood in the house I grew up in, but fortunately, it was not that deep. Less than a foot of water all told, after the tail end of a hurricane. But it still took 3 separate clean up efforts by a contractor, all covered by Mom's insurance. We were basically broke back then, though only my mother knew it. Still, it was the only way to get our basement, which included my bedroom, returned to livable condition. The increase in premiums was manageable over time. Now I think of it, I even had a fish tank in my room, which was fortunately not affected, though it was surreal to see the flood waters swirling underneath the tank. It was on a sturdy home made stand about 14 inches high.. it still had a light on, adding to the fantastical look of the flooding water.

With the cost today simply to replace equipment, not counting livestock, insurance has to be worth investigating at the very least. There's a chance it will not be worth the cost of the premiums to cover livestock, but that cost may well depend on the type or number of livestock or plants. Though one might hope plants would be more recoverable than livestock might be.

Often things that are rare or costly will have premiums that just are not affordable, where things that are more common may well have much more reasonable premiums. And one other thing.. most insurance companies expect you to make every possible effort to save as much as you can from whatever catastrophe is taking place. Sometimes their idea of what's reasonable can be surprising. If the freezer fails, you are expected to save as much as you can, by eating it, putting it into a fridge or a cooler, or insulating the freezer itself with whatever you can manage, like bedding and towels. Save the meat first, it costs the most. Same with a flood, if possible, save whatever is most valuable from a flood.

And never toss anything into the trash that you hope to claim for. If the adjuster does not see it, chances are they won't pay, especially if you don't have or lost the receipts in the same disaster. If something is rotting and can't remain, take good pics that have some sort of provable date on them. But try not to dispose of anything before an adjuster comes to see it.

I for one plan to find out about costs and what kind of coverage is available, partly from curiosity, but also because I do hope one day to live in a house again and at that point it will be critical to know.

Weather is never reliable, but with the way our weather has changed over the past decades, I don't think it's realistic to believe that rainfall like this is only going to happen once or twice in a century. This is the third time I have seen rain of this kind cause flooding like this since I was a small child and I've always lived in the Mississauga area. My parents lost all their brand new landscaping to the tag end of a hurricane when I was a baby, just after they bought their house. Fortunately the basement was bare concrete and survived without much issue.

No matter the reasons why, the weather boffins have been predicting fairly drastic changes to weather patterns for the years to come. It pays to be prepared as best you can.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

they won't cover the fish most likely, but all the equipment should be covered. At least the tanks themselves should be perfectly fine, just need to clean them as long as the flood water was clean and not from the sewer, that would require major bleaching to be safe.

Do the claim, get things cleaned up properly and safely. Show your mother these posts in case she didn't think of some of the things we mentioned.

The money lost from being off work due to being sick from being in a mouldy house would be much more than a small premium increase.


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## nismobg (Jun 7, 2013)

I am not too familiar with this specific home insurance but most companies don't pay for flood when it comes from doors and windows, they however pay if it is from inside the house(water back running from the sewer etc.). That was one of the reasons they put on fire those houses during Sandy in NYC. You have to give them a call and double check I might be wrong, plus I am pretty sure there is no natural disaster insurance that covers : earthquakes, flood, sinkholes, landslides, man made accidents etc.


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

I had a long hard talk with my mother and she finally gets it. As far as i know she is claiming it


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

I've always had the tank leaking/breaking on me causing a flood, but never an actual flood. That's worrisome when it comes to owning a house.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

Kimchi24 said:


> I had a long hard talk with my mother and she finally gets it. As far as i know she is claiming it


Great to hear, have fun shopping for new equipment! Time for a 180 gallon? The great light system, that new canister filter you have been wanting? This might turn out to be a good thing. Remember, its replacement value, not what you actually paid.

I guess I should see about increasing my insurance, I think I am only covered for 20 k but all my aquarium stuff would be a few k replacement value even though I spent only about 1 k in total. I rent so only contents insurance.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

It depends on the policy you have whether it's replacement value or 'real 'value. Premiums that only cover 'real' value are less expensive, but it's much more practical to buy insurance for replacement value, because replacements tend to cost more, if only because prices tend to continue to rise over time. 

And you usually won't find that great deal you found the first time, when you need to buy new right away. Keep receipts, or keep a photo or video record of what you own, since insurance usually wants some kind of proof of what you had. With the cost of data cards so much lower now, taking pics of everything you own and keeping it in a safe place is pretty easy these days. Safe deposit boxes are probably one of the better places to keep such information. Might never need it but if you do, the cost of the box rental will be more than worth it.


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