sman
Member
So, I live in Michigan, where for the last 2 days it has rained more than I think it has all year. Thanks to the leftovers from whatever hurricane it was. Any who, our basement flooded, this is conveniently where the tanks are
. We did our best to clean it up last night, we had believed the water had stopped coming in, it had stayed on the unfinished side of the basement.
I was rudely awakened this morning by my dad at 5:30, he got up early to see if any more water came in and heard this "beeping" over by my computer which is next to the tank. Having just woke up I had absolutely NO idea what the hell it would be, at first I thought maybe it was the tunze osmolator saying the sump was overflowing, but thats a solid tone, not a beep beep beep kinda noise. Then it hit me......battery backup. Im fairly certan that was THE fastest I have EVER gotten out of bed.
The whole basement was under water, even the finished side, I had one extension cord out (the one with 3 plugs on the end) getting ready for a water change that I was going to setup this morning before class. Water made it high enough and touched that cord, it popped my GFCI in the middle of the night and my battery backup came on.
When I installed the BB only a few things where actually plugged into it, in hopes to allow it to run long enough to keep something alive, my smaller heater (150w), the skimmer for oxygenation, and my return pump. I tested it shortly after hooking it all up, and if all power was lost the BB would keep the tank in check for about 2 hours.
When I got down stairs I noticed the water level in the display was low, (but at least my siphon break didn't fail). The battery backup had died, and the tank was completely still, and kinda smelled bad, which I figured was a VERY bad sign. After frantically pulling cords out trying to the GFCI to reset, I finally got power restored to most of the tank.
The only thing I seen moving (keep in mind this is about 6 hours before the lights normally come on, so I left them off just using the lights in the room to see) were my clowns, and they were breathing heavy, very heavy.
I just stood there and watched, I had no idea what to think, after a few minutes my tomini tank stumbled around the corner of a rock. He was WHITE, he had ZERO color, it scared the ---- out of me, at first I didnt even know what it was. He looked very bad, so I shut the room lights off and went back to cleaning up the mess in the rest of the basement, figuring that if the fish are sleeping there using less o2, which because of the present situation, was kinda a scarce resource.
I kept making any excuse during the cleanup to walk by the tank and see what was up. And finally, lights on time. Slowly but surely everyone started to wake up and make there way out of the rock, and all appear to be perfectly fine, everyone is present and accounted for except my pistol and yellow watchman, but they usually sleep later (lazy).
But I got lucky, really lucky. I just finished getting the logs from the BB via computer, there was a power failure at 2.14am, the backup provided power until 4:37, and that's when the batteries died and it just continues to beep after that. I find it hard to believe no one on the first floor,(since my room is on the second) heard the beeping from 2:14am until 5:29am, it took until 5:30 for someone to hear it. I thank this thing for the survival of my tank. I will be upgrading to a bigger BB, and getting some battery air pumps in the VERY near future in case something like this happens again.
Again I stress that I got VERY lucky. This is just my story that im hopping someone will read and motivate them to get some safety precautions (GFCI) and a backup / power loss plan, I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I went through, it was stressful enough, and I didn't even loose anything.
So please people, have a plan in case of a power outage and use a GFCI.
I was rudely awakened this morning by my dad at 5:30, he got up early to see if any more water came in and heard this "beeping" over by my computer which is next to the tank. Having just woke up I had absolutely NO idea what the hell it would be, at first I thought maybe it was the tunze osmolator saying the sump was overflowing, but thats a solid tone, not a beep beep beep kinda noise. Then it hit me......battery backup. Im fairly certan that was THE fastest I have EVER gotten out of bed.
The whole basement was under water, even the finished side, I had one extension cord out (the one with 3 plugs on the end) getting ready for a water change that I was going to setup this morning before class. Water made it high enough and touched that cord, it popped my GFCI in the middle of the night and my battery backup came on.
When I installed the BB only a few things where actually plugged into it, in hopes to allow it to run long enough to keep something alive, my smaller heater (150w), the skimmer for oxygenation, and my return pump. I tested it shortly after hooking it all up, and if all power was lost the BB would keep the tank in check for about 2 hours.
When I got down stairs I noticed the water level in the display was low, (but at least my siphon break didn't fail). The battery backup had died, and the tank was completely still, and kinda smelled bad, which I figured was a VERY bad sign. After frantically pulling cords out trying to the GFCI to reset, I finally got power restored to most of the tank.
The only thing I seen moving (keep in mind this is about 6 hours before the lights normally come on, so I left them off just using the lights in the room to see) were my clowns, and they were breathing heavy, very heavy.
I just stood there and watched, I had no idea what to think, after a few minutes my tomini tank stumbled around the corner of a rock. He was WHITE, he had ZERO color, it scared the ---- out of me, at first I didnt even know what it was. He looked very bad, so I shut the room lights off and went back to cleaning up the mess in the rest of the basement, figuring that if the fish are sleeping there using less o2, which because of the present situation, was kinda a scarce resource.
I kept making any excuse during the cleanup to walk by the tank and see what was up. And finally, lights on time. Slowly but surely everyone started to wake up and make there way out of the rock, and all appear to be perfectly fine, everyone is present and accounted for except my pistol and yellow watchman, but they usually sleep later (lazy).
But I got lucky, really lucky. I just finished getting the logs from the BB via computer, there was a power failure at 2.14am, the backup provided power until 4:37, and that's when the batteries died and it just continues to beep after that. I find it hard to believe no one on the first floor,(since my room is on the second) heard the beeping from 2:14am until 5:29am, it took until 5:30 for someone to hear it. I thank this thing for the survival of my tank. I will be upgrading to a bigger BB, and getting some battery air pumps in the VERY near future in case something like this happens again.
Again I stress that I got VERY lucky. This is just my story that im hopping someone will read and motivate them to get some safety precautions (GFCI) and a backup / power loss plan, I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I went through, it was stressful enough, and I didn't even loose anything.
So please people, have a plan in case of a power outage and use a GFCI.
