lost power for 3 hours!!

[renogaw]

had a huge transformer on the road last night, spewing electrical sparks and lighting up the road like a football stadium. needless to say, we had no power. I agitated the water every 30 mins and swirled it a little to get some movement, but i don't think my royal gramma handled it very well. He's holed up in one of my egg sized barnacle shells and didnt come out to eat this morning i moved the barnacle around and he swam to stay in it so he's not dead.
i plan on getting a ups (battery backup). luckily my sump didn't overflow.

 

[mandarin w]

Check the temp, Maybe do a small water change. With the skimmer and filter not running you probly have a small build up in the tank. The water change will help take some of the junk out of the water, and also put some air back in.
Last summer when the tornados came thru and knock out the power, quite a few reefers in our local club where with out power for as long as 10 days, some not as long. I will tell you, that we have several club members not loose a single thing after 10 days. Battery backups are a nice thing to have on hand.

 

[renogaw]

yea, water temp went from 78 down to 74 but is slowly raising. i didn't think about that. hopefully when i get home he'll be back to his zippy self.
i'll do a water change tonight as well. thanks for the advice and have a happy thanksgiving!!

 

[chipmaker]

A battery backup is not going to help if the tank is in need of a heater to stay warm enough. Gen sets that are small and just right for a setup are just too cheap. They will carry the load needed for any aquarium setup and provide heatand lights and filtration and also provide the owner some power as well to watch TV or fire up a light bulb or coffee maker. Three hours is not all that long to have power out.
Don't know if anyone watched Animal Cops last night on TV. It had an episode of SPCA personel in HOuston area. They were called in to rescue two iguanas that were left abandoned in a building for over a month. They came and they also found what appeared to be perhaps a 60 or 75 gal tank of saltwater fish setup. It had live rock, lots of critters (snails, starfish, crabs, shrimp etc) corals, as well as a few fish which appeared to be mainly gobies and damsels of various types. It wa there for over a month without power or being fed. The owner of the place that had rented the building out came and seen the mess......after a month or so, and called the humane shelter. The water was down about 4 or 5 inches and it was as green as grass you could hardly tell fish or nayhting else was in the tank. That tank other than green water, was alive and healthy and water temps they said was approaching 90 deg. No real lights or filtration, or food, just whatever light came through the window. It wa amazing in over a month nothing died (odds are maybe somehting died and was consumed by the living inhabitants though)

 

[renogaw]

a 200w heater will eat through a battery backup in 3 hours?
i'm planning on eventually getting a generator for the house, but would only run it for the fridge, well pump, and boiler.

 

[mandarin w]

You can go to Wal-mart and pick up a battery operated airpump to put some air in the tank while the power is out. Less than $10 bucks. You can also pick up a power inverter while there, also about $10buck. The power inverter will hook to your cars battery and the other end of the cord you can plug in your heater or your skimmer for a little bit. Hopfully the power isn't off for a very long time. But this will help if you loose power for 6 or 10 hours. If you think you will be down for an extended amount of time then pick up a generator. You could switch it between your fridge and tank.
But a battery powered airpump and a car inverter are always good to keep on hand. You never know when an ice storm will knock out your power for a while.

 

[waterworld]

I go with the power inverter. Battery back-ups have a limited run time before they die and then you are screwed. Inverters take less storage space and cost leaa than a generator. The one I keep on hand will run one of my 250W heaters and a power head.
Think also along the lines of conserving heat when using your back-up. Cover the tank with some blankets towels etc to keep the heat in. I think the key is to keep dramatic changes in temp etc from happening. Even when the power comes back on if your temp has dropped to the lower 70's you may not want your heaters to run it up to full temp very fast.
A key factor with any type of back-up. Run a full test so you will be prepared. If you use a battery test it weekly and know the expected run time. With an inverter, how will you run a cord from your car to the tank, do you have a cord on hand that will be long enough? Do you know how to hook-up the inverter.
It is best to test under control than learn by fire!
WW

 

[scsinet]

A heater of only 100 watts will chew through any small scale UPS system in no time. You'd need a huge UPS to do is, and UPS units increase in cost exponentially as they go up in size, especially past about 620VA. Besides, they need periodic battery replacements which add a recurring cost.
I'm of Chip and Waterworld's schools of thought on this. Here is my setup:
1. My alarm systems panel is programmed to notify the monitoring company when it loses power. All monitored alarm panels are capable of this. The power transformer for the alarm panel is plugged into the circuit that my fish room runs off of, AFTER the GFI (so I get notified if it trips). The alarm monitoring service is set up to call me for power failure, as opposed to the cops.
2. I have a 2400 watt generator that I have ready to go, and my fiance is also versed in how to run the extension cords and set everything up.
3. I have a 700 watt power inverter which can be powered directly off my car which supplies enough power to run my pumps on any one tank, so I can rotate it from tank to tank, as a secondary backup (in case the generator won't start, etc).
This may be overkill. I used to push the power inverter idea really hard, but it is easier to store than a generator. A generator (especially a small one) can be gotten for less than $250 these days, and they are nice and quiet, perfect for setting on a 3rd floor apartment balcony, for instance, which is definitely a situation where running a cord to your car wouldn't work. You could keep a car battery handy, but for extended outages, it's hard to keep it charged.
Bottom line is that gasoline or natural gas generators are the only real way to survive an extended outage. 12 hours is great to size a UPS for, but it's all for not if the outage is 18 hours long

 

[renogaw]

wow, would never have thought they would eat up a ups so fast, thanks all. time to remove it from my xmas list then LOL.

 

[scsinet]

Originally Posted by renogaw
wow, would never have thought they would eat up a ups so fast, thanks all. time to remove it from my xmas list then LOL.
A 100w heater draws as much as a PC, which is what they were designed to back up. Remember though that UPS units are designed to keep a computer running only long enough to save your work and shut it down.
They are useful for running a pump or powerhead though.

 

[fbm]

Shouldn't a good set up be able to withstand a power loss for hours?

 

[scsinet]

Yes, that's the point.
If you are going to be running heaters, then you need either a really big UPS, which is cost prohibitive, or a generator.

 

[helpme74]

if you have a ups take the 12 volt battery out and hook a 12 volt car battery up to the ups gives you along time more

 

[chipmaker]

Who wants an automotive battery full of sulphuric acid setting around.........heck they get corrosion buildup on them normally which will eat holes i your clothes or carpet or whatever it gets near plus its venting is putting sulphuiric acid vapors in to the area which can lead to respiratory problems or cause other things to corrode and rust up in the room. Automotive lead acid batteries do not belong indoors.
Folks can do what they want but ther eis not any amount of inverters of UPS that can hold a candle to a small gen set for power and not have a hassle or inconvieince in the process and stil have something that can work for long term. I hate to be usjing a inverter, and then pull a battery down and need the vehicle, or have to run a V-8 or 4 cylinder engine to power a system when I can get by on a small gen set that runs all day long on a gal of gas like those 1000 watt hondas or the 750 watt yamahas, as wellas a host of other brands. They have gen sets no bigger than a bowling bag is and no heavier than a typical bowling bag and ball weighs for under $250, which is what you will pay for a good sized inverter equal to what those gen sets put out, or for a decent UPS.

 

[scsinet]

To be fair, UPS units have lead acid batteries in them as well, but the difference is that UPSs used SEALED lead acid batteries, unlike car batteries.
Some issues still remain in this plan:
A) a car battery is not meant to be driven by light or moderate loads over long periods. It's meant to supply huge amounts of current for a few seconds (to start an engine), at which time the car's alternator takes over. The way to mitigate this is to use a Deep Cycle Marine battery, which are designed to be... yep... deep cycled.
B) UPS circuitry is not designed to supply the load that a deeply discharged marine battery places on it's charging circuit if power returns after the battery has mostly discharged. This may easily destroy the UPS.
C) They only design a UPS to power a FULL LOAD for a short period of time. There is more to it than just the battery. The MOSFETS and transformer inside the unit are only designed for a short duty cycle at full load. If you want long term backup, you must upsize the entire UPS.
D) There is still the recurring cost of replacing a battery
E) Cost. By the time you spend 75 bucks on a 500VA UPS, another 75 bucks on a deep cycle battery, what do you have? 150 dollars in a UPS system that still has limited backup time, no extra capacity to power other stuff, like your fridge, and a nagging feeling that your rigged UPS system won't work when the time comes. If generators were still 600 dollars minimum, I'd say it's a viable solution... but when generators are so cheap these days, why not just do it right? Considering what's at stake... think about the cost of your livestock and the time it would take to reestablish a dead tank....
I'm with Chipmaker. A UPS is fine I guess, but an generator is a far better solution.

 

[helpme74]

i got the ups free from work because it had a bad battery
but if your not home a generator will not work unless you buy a auto transfer switch to switch the power over