dsorge
New Member
Scenario:
1 50 Gallon Salt Fish Only containing 1 Yellow Tang, 1 Percula Clown, 3 Damsels, 1 Fromia Star, many Hermits, 1 Tigertail Cuke and 1 tiny Yellow Cuke.
1 50 Gallon African Cichlid Tank containing 6 various types, not important to this forum.
1 6 Gallon Salt (hospital) containing 1 Small Chromis and a Hermit Crab.
At about 9:00PM last night, Sacramento was overcome by an amazing rain storm, I'm talking torrential stuff, that lasted about 3 hours. At midnight the power went out. Living in an old downtown historic neighborhood like mine (houses range between 60-100 years old) we are occasionally blessed with power outages, maybe two a year usually not lasting more than 15-45 minutes. Being the systems engineer that I am, I put all electronics on UPS (Uninteruptible Power Supply), including my tanks. Because running all the equipment can really drain the UPS battery, I choose to put only the heater and powerheads on battery power. I can usually get about 30 minutes of power for each tank, depending on outside temperature. Anyways, last night the power for the neighborhood goes out at midnight and doesn't come back on until 7:30AM. FYI, our power company, didn't even know until my wife called at 6:00AM. So, that's 7.5 hours that we were dark. Needless to say, my UPS's weren't much good. Within those hours, my tank temps dropped 12F degrees and had no water circulation. The only thing I was really able to do was wrap blankets around the tanks to insulate from the cold drafty house we live in. But, on a happy note, everybody seems fine, keyword being "seems", I'll know more as time progresses. Why am I telling you this story? Well, two reasons. First reason, be prepared. Second reason, to pose the curious question, if you had only one vital piece of aquarium equipment to run off of a UPS battery, what would it be? I came down to two, either the heaters or powerheads. I choose powerheads, for circulation and O2. I encourage fellow fish folks to take stock in what you would do in my situation.
1 50 Gallon Salt Fish Only containing 1 Yellow Tang, 1 Percula Clown, 3 Damsels, 1 Fromia Star, many Hermits, 1 Tigertail Cuke and 1 tiny Yellow Cuke.
1 50 Gallon African Cichlid Tank containing 6 various types, not important to this forum.
1 6 Gallon Salt (hospital) containing 1 Small Chromis and a Hermit Crab.
At about 9:00PM last night, Sacramento was overcome by an amazing rain storm, I'm talking torrential stuff, that lasted about 3 hours. At midnight the power went out. Living in an old downtown historic neighborhood like mine (houses range between 60-100 years old) we are occasionally blessed with power outages, maybe two a year usually not lasting more than 15-45 minutes. Being the systems engineer that I am, I put all electronics on UPS (Uninteruptible Power Supply), including my tanks. Because running all the equipment can really drain the UPS battery, I choose to put only the heater and powerheads on battery power. I can usually get about 30 minutes of power for each tank, depending on outside temperature. Anyways, last night the power for the neighborhood goes out at midnight and doesn't come back on until 7:30AM. FYI, our power company, didn't even know until my wife called at 6:00AM. So, that's 7.5 hours that we were dark. Needless to say, my UPS's weren't much good. Within those hours, my tank temps dropped 12F degrees and had no water circulation. The only thing I was really able to do was wrap blankets around the tanks to insulate from the cold drafty house we live in. But, on a happy note, everybody seems fine, keyword being "seems", I'll know more as time progresses. Why am I telling you this story? Well, two reasons. First reason, be prepared. Second reason, to pose the curious question, if you had only one vital piece of aquarium equipment to run off of a UPS battery, what would it be? I came down to two, either the heaters or powerheads. I choose powerheads, for circulation and O2. I encourage fellow fish folks to take stock in what you would do in my situation.
