Emergency Backup Plan......

I have a generator but there just a pain in the as unless you have it hard wired in to a generator panel. We back feed it into the drier plug and flip off almost all the circuits. What I have been thinking of doing is making up some pipes with 12 volt water pumps in them and slipping them in to the line where the quick connects is for the canisters.


I do have 12 volt pumps in my sumps that are setup on a flick of a switch. They have deep cycle batteries, with trickle chargers. The pumps are a lot slower than the 120 volt pumps but I have 6 hours of water movement and flirtation.

I don’t do anything about heat because our power is never off more that 30 minutes. A lot of times if there’s a bad storm I’ll turn on the 12 volt systems and let the motors run.
 
Originally posted by RTR
For power outages less than 4-6 hours, I ignore them. Between 6 and 8 hours, I get ready for biofiltration saves. After 8 hours I dump the biomedia of all my canisters into shallow glass or food-safe plastic trays, barely covered with water. They have survived 3-day outages in that condition.

Last year we had three major outages, 30 hours to >2 days. I lost some shrimp babies in a couple of tanks, no adult fish.
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Ah, valuable information! I've known the steps to take, but never really knew when to take them.

When the GFI got tripped yesterday and the 105 gallon was out for many hours, all I did was to dose with Prime and restart. Everything seems OK. 2 huge canisters on that tank.
 
The power went out here for about 12 hours during a hurricane last fall. It was warm, so the temp wasn't a problem then. I just did a little manual surface agitation every few hours to move the water around a little bit, but I don't really know how much that helped. I didn't lose any fish or have any noticable problems while the power was out or after it came back on. It went out for a three or four hours a few times during ice storms over the past winter, and I was more worried then because our apartment is older and gets cold FAST when the heat is off. I just put some heavy blankets over the tanks, and again, didn't have any problems. I don't think the temp ever got below 72 in my 55 gallon tank, and I only had one ten gallon tank with two small goldfish in it at the time (they're in a bigger tank now), so I wasn't really worried about it as much, but I guess a smaller tank would get cold faster.
 
Well THAT was disappointing! We have a CyberPower 825AVR with 3 backup outlets. I plugged my Filstar XP3 and lights (One 2 bulb shop light, One 4 bulb shop light) into it. I can't say exactly when it ran out (ran into the basement for 5 or so minutes) but it was right around 20 minutes! That's it, 20 minutes!!
I'm going to try again after it powers back up but this time I'm only going to run the filter and 2bulb light. I'll probably run just the filter after that to see how long that goes too.
To be continued...
 
RTR is right about the backups. I looked into this a little while ago. The ones you get cheap for your pc won't handle the power needed to turn your filter motors. For that you need the big boy UPS and those go for around $1000! Ouch. You can get a nice generator for less if power loss really concerns you.

Tom
 
Unless Your Wanting To Spend $1000+ On A UPS I Would Recommend Just Getting A Little Coleman Powermate There Only Around $300-50 If I Remember Right. I Got Mine About 6 Years Ago And It Has Saved My House From Getting Flooded Saved My Tanks Etc...

Something To Think About Is The Batteries In The UPS's Only Last About 3-3.5 Years Then You Need To Replace Them...

They Will Also Only Run For So Long When The Powers Out Even If There Is Only Say 20 Watt Drain On It. It Takes A Certain Amount Of Power To Run The DC/AC Converter In Them & They Are Not 100% Efficient. They Are Instantaneous A Generator Is Not...
 
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