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What do you do when the lights go out?

C

chaoscat

I had a few nervous moments Saturday night. A short while after the winds kicked up, we lost power. I didn't immediately panic, as we rarely lose it for long, only for a few minutes in this case. But, it was enough to send to me to the basement with a flashlight, rooting around for those old battery operated air pumps I kept around from our last move. Before I could do much more than that, the lights came back on - situation over.

But, what can you do if the power stays out for hours? I could keep air going with battery pumps. I could create some flow every once in a while with my hand or a long spoon. But temperature? Short, of heating water in a cup over a candle or sterno can - I got no clue. (it's probably inadvisable to heat the water in your tank with an acetylene torch.:p)

How long do you really have with that tank sitting powerless before you're in trouble?

What alternatives are there, short of buying a generator, to handle the situation?
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Hopefully Brian or Deb will get a chance to post, they had it out for nearly 24 hours Saturday into Sunday.
 
B

Brian

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Yes, we did. I really have no plan for outages because it happens so rarely. This is a topic that has been brought up numerous times on the site and then dies off.

Having a power failure never seems real until your sitting there after 10 hours with no power watching the temp drop in your tank from a toasty 78 all the way down to 68 and PSE&G telling me it wasn't coming back on for another day.

Luckily I was able to go out and rent a 3000 watt generator from Home Depot and hook up my return pump and heaters to it. I could have hooked up the whole system, but I figured I wouldn't put any additional stress on the corals after the temp drop.

Having an acrylic tank helped keep the heat in (acrylic insulates better than glass) so that's why it took a long time for the temp to drop in my system.

That being said, I think I'm going to start looking into a generator for these just in case moments.
 
JohnS_323

JohnS_323

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I keep This Link stored in my favorites. One of these years I'd really like to get around to trying it out.

The other thing you can do is get a good UPS and run a heater and a powerhead through it. If the power kicks off, you could probably get a good couple of hours use out of it. We had a power failure that lasted a few hours a while back and we were able to make it through with a UPS. I would turn it on for an hour and then off for a half and then on for an hour and off for a half. . . . It kept the tank oxygenated and relatively warm the whole time (I think probably like 10 hours or so). Fortunately, that was when our system was only 120g total. I'm not sure what we'd do now.
 
D

danthemanj

FRAG SWAP VENDOR
There are a few things that I put in place when I setup my new system. For starters, my entire system is run with one Reeflo Hammerhead pump (this does not a seperate hammerhead pump for my closed loop pump for the tank). I have this connected to a 2200 VA APC UPS. This should be able to run the pump for about 2.5 hours in case of a power loss. I have also attached an Azoo air pump to the UPS. The air pump only comes on when it loses power so once the UPS dies, the air pump will kick on and can produce bubbles for upto 48 hours. I ran the air outlets through my plumbing which comes out from the bottom of my tank. In addition to this. I purchased a 6500 watt generator from Costco for about $650 which is sufficinet to run my entire system (if it ever gets to that). Heat loss is really only an issue in winter but I have noticed that the Hammerhead pumps also generate a decent amount of heat so that helps. I figure that these items will pay for themselves in a single extended power failure in addition to giving me peace of mind that I have some sort of backup in place.
 
K

KillaGoby

I was in PA all weekend and we had the power out for over 12 hours there. Thank gosh we don't have a fishtank in the cabin there. The only downside was that was the day I bought a new flatscreen TV and we could not watch it that night. BUMMER!!! lol
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

Here's an if/then statement for you English majors...

IF....uncovering a tank and blowing a fan across it will make it cooler - THEN wouldn't covering the tank with say a sheet of acrylic/glass cover help trap the heat into the tank? Or will the heat dissipate so fast that the amount of heat saved is too small to bother with?

Also - what do you do if you are not at home? Is there a way that something could be set so that you are notified? Is that what the Neptune Controllers can help with?

JohnS_323 said:
I keep This Link stored in my favorites.
Click to expand...
The "link" doesn't work. :-\
 
B

BobCReef

Phil on that same line. I would think covering the whole thing with a heavy blanket would help hold the heat for a little while. You know the problem with generators is they never run when you need them.
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
BobCReef said:
Phil on that same line. I would think covering the whole thing with a heavy blanket would help hold the heat for a little while. You know the problem with generators is they never run when you need them.
Click to expand...

That's just not funny. Last time we had an outtage we tried to start up the generator and of course it wouldn't start (until the next day when we didn't need it to). I agree about trying to insulate the tank, if possible, through the use of blankets.
 
EricBa

EricBa

I, unfortunately had the power go out for almost 48 hours, from Sat 7 pm to late Mon Afternoon up here in Montville, NJ. A 75 ft pine in front of my house ( I believe it is on twnshp property, I hope) came down and took out power lines on both sides of the street. On the opposite side, the next pole broke in half and cracked the next three poles down the line. This actually caused the power lines to fall across the RR tracks which are a couple hundred yards from my house. This closed the NJ transit train line from Boonton into Hoboken. You may have heard about this on the evening news. In any case, 8 years ago, when Hurricane Floyd came through, we lost power for 5 days(another long story). I was able to run the a power line from a neighbor to run the tank basics. From the insureance losses of that event I bought a generator. The generator has sat in my shed for 8 years ( I start it once a year to make sure its ok) without an event or need. Well this weekend there was a need. I was literally a life saver for the inhabitants of my tank.

Phil, I had a scare with the generator not starting as well, but after 1/2 hour it started.

Eric
 
MikeNapoli

MikeNapoli

My power went out today/this morning. It was a squirel in the transformer. PSE&G came right out and fixed it in only a couple hours, thankfully.

If I had a larger system I would definitely look into a generator
 
R

ReeferNets

Last year we had a bad storm in the summer and lost power for 4 hours.

I hooked up the entire 10 gallon tank ;D to a generator and was not powerless at all.

Funny thing about it is that my father owns a roofing company so i have all the generators i could ever want. One of them has enough power to run a small house.
 
B

BobCReef

Phyl the last big snow storm we had the power went out. Now i need the generator for the greenhouses and sure enough it wouldn't start. Now here's the saving grace. My neighbor had power. Me and everyone north on the street not power. Next door and south had power for about 2 more hours. Long extension cords saved me until my son went and borrowed a generator (that ran). Next day after the power was on sure enough got my generator started.
 
K

KillaGoby

My parent's have a propane generator that could power their 4000 square foot home in SC for a week if needs be. My father put it in in case of a massive hurricane. All because they live on the coast. He started at Home Depot looking at the smaller one's, then decided to put a propane tank in the ground to power an industrial sized one because the one's at home depot couldn't power most of the stuff in his house. It's funny, when the power goes out in the community my mom does not even realize it because the generator kicks on right away. Too bad he doesn't have a reef tank...
 
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