Advice on electricity outage

[ggNoRe]

Well, with not a drop of rain and perfectly clear skies my electricity decided to go out. Normally I wouldn't be to worried but I just recently added 2 shrimp which in my experience are the most sensitive of all. Also as of the past couple days my corals seem to be a little sappy. Atm my temp is at 78.8 so I don't think I have to worry to much about that just yet and plan to drop a ziplock bag with some ice if it starts to get a lot hotter. But there is absolutely no flow which seems to be freaking out my pep shrimp and also worries me about my sps should it remain this way for several hours. I doubt anyone is on at this time of night but seeing as I don't have much else to do w/ no electricity I decided to jump on my phone and see if maybe I could get some tips as of what to do in this circumstance.

 

[dcantucson]

What I have done is to get a small pitcher and scoop water out of the tank and then pour it back into the tank from about 6-10 inches or so. I did it about 6 times every ten to fifteen minutes. It help with water movement and also oxygen. Good luck.

 

[ggNoRe]

Thanks fort the advice! I will definitely keep it in mind for future reference but looks like my electric company was on top of things and got it back up and running already. Phew!

 

[dcantucson]

That's good news. You'll be able to get some sleep after all. :lol:

 

[ggNoRe]

Haha you would think! Now I'm feeling restless...

 

[PRC]

Somebody has gotta figure out an inexpensive alternative energy source that we can use with batteries for emergency situations like this...We see too many of these threads...

 

[yote]

If my electricty is out more than a couple of hours,I drag out my generator and fire it up.:D

 

[d2mini]

If my electricty is out more than a couple of hours,I drag out my generator and fire it up.:D

+1

There are also battery operated powerheads out there somewhere. Try google.
And if you have the cash, something like Vortech power heads with their battery backup are really nice. Power goes out and they switch to battery power automatically.

 

[Bifferwine]

Temperature and flow are the two things you have to be concerned about. After a couple hours without power, your temp will start to fluctuate and your water will become stagnant.

 

[dcantucson]

Somebody has gotta figure out an inexpensive alternative energy source that we can use with batteries for emergency situations like this...We see too many of these threads...

One would think a simple device would already been developed. A company could really capitalize on a product such as this. I know I'd buy one.

 

[reeffreak]

A power generator is the way to go.I've heard of people using backup batteries use to run computers to run powerheads/heaters when the electricity goes out.

 

[wontonflip]

We've had a couple of 1-4 hour power outages lately due to the heat. I thought my backup battery would at least power up just one powerhead, but no go. Wasn't strong enough. Generator is what we might get one of these days. My hubby just needs power for his DVR box (heaven forbid he'd miss recording a show LOL), cable modem, and with me, just one to power up just one powerhead.

 

[VAreef]

You can always get a car battery and a simple inverter that clamps on to it. More than enough to run a few powerheads for a few hours. My sister actually lives "off the grid" and this is how she watches TV, radio, etc. Very cheap but won't help you if your not at home to plug it up.

 

[puttycat]

I bought a generator cause our power used to go out all the time. Haven't had to use it in 3 years. One time by the time I hooked it up and started it the power came back on. Get a generator its an almost guarantee the power will never go out. At least I can use it for other stuff so it hasn't been a total waste lol

 

[Gigaah]

A cheap 300w inverter and a car battery(roughly 100amp hours). I'm not so sharply focused but I think if you invert 12v dc to 120v ac that would put you at 10amp hours at 120v converted. So you could run 1 amp for 10 hours.(not counting inverter loss..the battery is a rough estimate and probably low so we'll ignore that).

My main pump on my tank is 700gph max 0 head. That is about .22amps 25 watts(this is max). A LARGE korila power head is 6 watts.

Unless I'm mistaken a car battery and an inverter could keep your entire system running for many hours. A large main pump 1500gph is around 140watts. So you can decide if you would want to keep the whole system going or just power heads.

If push comes to shove pull the battery out of your car. run it for awhile..put battery back in car..drive a bit..run your system more..lol.

I've been working on the idea since I'm going to have a breeder tank that I seriously do not want to go down for any period of time.

 

[joesch_1999]

I bought a air pump that uses 4 d batteries works great

 

[tankedchemist]

wrong thread. oops!

 

[sen5241b]

You could get a couple of air pumps and run them off an auto-inverter to keep flow going. A water pump will not run off an inverter becuase the inverter does not generate syne-wave power. I do not know if a heater will run off an auto inverter.

 

[Gigaah]

You have a point. I wasn't thinking about the inverters conversion.