Surviving first power outage

[patrick richard]

Hi everyone,

Well I survived my first power outage. I was heading to my parents house yesterday, but I was unable to get there do to streets flooding. I decided to turn around and head back home. When I arrived at my house I found my power out. The power went out at 12:30 PM. I thought that maybe it would only be out for a short time and then it would be back on. I was wrong.. After a few hours I started to worry. I have nine discus tanks set up. So I had to decide what to do. I figured the most important thing that I needed was my air pumps back on. I went to home depot and picked up two inverters and then picked up two 12 volt batteries. I was able to plug my air pumps in and run the tanks without any other problems. I had to get two inverters since I have tanks upstairs and downstairs. The water temp stayed at 84 degrees, so I was lucky with that. My power did not come back on until nine hours later. All my discus made it through unharmed. After this event I will be trying to come up with a way to have backup power ready if this happens again.

Just wanted to let everyone know how my day went yesterday.

Thinks for listening,
Patrick

[*Polka dots roc*]

Glad to hear you had a good day lol. I hate power outages, they are all stressful. Good to hear all fish made it out safely anyways.

[patrick richard]

thanks,

It was definitly a very stressful day. I don't want to have that happen again, but if it does then I am ready...

Patrick

[finaddictfred]

Good job. Power outtages are super stressful for sure.
Living in Fl and getting Hurricane'd to death I decided to invest a few bucks in a 700 watt power converter to hook up to my Jeep battery. I can at least run the fan and lights on my reef for a few hours off and on and keep a couple of my fresh water filters running so I don't lose all my biological filtration in those tanks.

[captain morgan]

Excellent idea and thanks for sharing. The only thing I've neglected for my aquarium is a emergency battery air pump. The battery air pump is a great idea and I will pick one up today- it's better to have one on hand and never use it then to wait until when it's needed-rush out to buy one and find out you can't because LFS in your area is closed due to power outage as well.

[Upper Canada]

I have an inverter as well as a 6500 watt generator. The inverter can run the air pump and all three central system pumps as long as the vehicle is running, or just the air pump if the vehicle is turned off. I seldom use the generator unless heat became an issue. When power is out for an extended time I use it for the house.

Bob

[Don Trinko]

Heat is the biggest problem for me. The heaters take a lot more power than the pumps/filters. I have natural gas so I have a ventless heater in the living room. In Ohio in the winter it will not keep the house at 84 but it minimizes the load on the batteries/inverters.
Upstairs most of the tanks are in one room. I have a portable lp heater. It keeps the room toasty! One lp container will last abought 6 hours. I use one 800watt inverter upstairs and 2 400watt and 1 200watt downstairs. All have 100 amp hour batteries that are kept charged at all times. Battery life is 5 to 10 hours depending on the load. I have 2 extra batteries but if we ever have a long outage I'm in trouble. I do have a small generater but the electrical wiring to the tanks is so spread out I would need extension cords all over the house. I also have 3 battery operated air pumps that would run a sponge filter each. People survival is easy; It's these expensive fish that like it at 84 that cause all the work for me. Don T.

[Roxanne]

Hi Don, why don't you invent fish tanks made from the same glass that has insulative properties as windows & stuff? It would save you expense in heating cos you would be really RICH!! (Think I just made somebody rich with that 1 but it wasn't me!! You heard it here first on SIMPLYDISCUS...I get royalties ok!!!)

To answer the question:Sometimes my power will trip & my circuit boards need resetting, and I also get power outs, so everything runs on UPS now, and, I got a deisel generator so if the power is out too long and/or if the end of the world comes I can still make deisel out of vegetable oil to keep the generator going & my fish alive....I am legend (I am spooky huh?)

[srusso]

When you lose power to a planted tank, aside from the filter could there be any other issues?

[DonMD]

What I wonder about is how long the biological filters (the bacterial colonies) in the canister filters will stay alive without oxygen-containing water pumping through. How long before they consume all the oxygen in the canister?

-Don

[Upper Canada]

Don,

Dieter Untergasser in his book Discus Health page 42 and 43 covers this problem. In a test they shut down an active canister filter and withdrew water samples each hour for testing. " the test results indicate how rapidly the nitrite content increases from the second hour onward........ far more dangerous than nitrite is, however, the accumulating hydrogen sulfide......" "The experiment clearly shows that a filter loaded with organic material from the aquarium and which is not operated at night or is stopped due to a power failure, can indeed poison the aquarium water when started up again in the morning. "

Hope this is helpful,

Bob

[poconogal]

Don,

Dieter Untergasser in his book Discus Health page 42 and 43 covers this problem. In a test they shut down an active canister filter and withdrew water samples each hour for testing. " the test results indicate how rapidly the nitrite content increases from the second hour onward........ far more dangerous than nitrite is, however, the accumulating hydrogen sulfide......" "The experiment clearly shows that a filter loaded with organic material from the aquarium and which is not operated at night or is stopped due to a power failure, can indeed poison the aquarium water when started up again in the morning. "

Hope this is helpful,

Bob

Having a canister, that is what always scared me, especially if we were away on vacation and the power went out. We finally got a whole house generator that automatically switches on when the power goes out. We've had some bad power outages, the worst was a few years ago, which lasted 4 days due to a severe ice storm here in the northeast, so the whole house generator is worth it in our case. Especially for the peace of mind...

[Roxanne]

Don,

Dieter Untergasser ... shut down an active canister filter and withdrew water samples each hour for testing. " the test results indicate how rapidly the nitrite content increases from the second hour onward........ far more dangerous than nitrite is, however, the accumulating hydrogen sulfide......" "The experiment clearly shows that a filter loaded with organic material from the aquarium and which is not operated at night or is stopped due to a power failure, can indeed poison the aquarium water when started up again in the morning. "

Hope this is helpful,

Bob

....

Very helpful Bob.....this is why the media should be taken out of the canister and air allowed to circulate around it...has the same poisoning effect as an internal filter with bad/no circulation...

who found this dinosaur of a thread?...
Rox