Opinions on Penn Plax automatic battery powered air pump

[goldfish freak]

Hello everyone, I would please like some opinions on the Penn Plax brand automatic battery powered back up air pump. Does anyone have experience with this product? Is it reliable and does it produce a decent amount of air for a long period of time? I am thinking about buying a couple of these as life support in case of another blackout.

[Tightdog1]

i have heard they are good i was goin to invest in a couple myself but then i found this UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) system for free form a friend of mine, i have that hooked up to my 55g and my 20g also. so i have no need for the battery air pumps, but i did a lot of research on them and have heard mostly good things about them.

[KateA.]

My husband uses one on his minnow bucket for fishing and it's lasted a few years.

[icefish]

Tightdog, how much time does that UPS give you? I was looking at them today (I lost an entire tank to a blackout two weeks ago), and none of the models I saw looked like they would provide more than an hour or so.

At least with the battery ppowered pumps you could keep sticking batteries in.

I live in Ottawa and so I was blacked out for about nine hours last night. I have an old Fluval 203 which comes with a squeeze ball primer. The primer's output is standard airline tubing, so I just hooked it up to my airline and gave it about 20 pumps every 15-30 minutes.

[goldfish freak]

Thanks for the replies. I t is good to hear that this is a good model of back up air pump. I have heard a couple of bad reports on the quailty of Penn Plax products in general, so I was somewhat worried.

To those people that have used this model, does it have a decent amount of air out put? I am planning on installing two in a 4 foot 120 gallon tank.

[goldfish freak]

Would two of these back up air pumps be enough to provide enough oxyegen for a 120 gallon tank stocked with six large fancy goldfish?

[Tightdog1]

ICEFISH, i have never used up the whole battery on the UPS yet i have 4 watt fluval 304 on it currently, but normally i also have a whisper2 on it but not currently. the longest ive ever had the power on was like 3 hours. its a 300watt UPS and thats about all i know since it was given to me by my friend who gave me all my fish tanks.

[beviking]

For any that are interested, I bought a "Fish Saver" bilge pump from Walmart for $20 bucks. Supposedly, it pumps 360gph. It runs off 12V power. I hooked up some longer leads to run it out the window to the car battery. If the battery gets low, start the car for a while to recharge it. The outlet is 3/4" schedule 40 pvc so I cut a piece to the depth of the tank and added an elbow at the top. Granted, this isn't automatic so won't help if myself or someone isn't there. Just thought I'd share.