Hurricane season is coming- what to do???

[djpj001]

Hello everybody!

I wanted to get some advice for hurricane prep. i live in miami, so that means I will mostly likely be a target for a hurricane or 4, which means no power!! yikes.
This is my first hurricane season with my saltwater tank and i was planning to get a generator. i have corals and my lighting fixtures are 4 VHO's 2 actinic that give out about 450 watts. What should I do? how long can coral go without lighting, because I’ve experience no power due to hurricanes for up to 2 weeks. If a generator is needed what KWatt do I need? i'm freaking out a bit because i have about over 500 hundreds dollars investing in coral and would hate for them to die. Plus i really like them. You guys that are in hurricane vicinities know what I'm talking about. i would appreciate any advice thank you.

Best regards

Djpj001

 

[bkv1997]

I would say you wouldn't want to go without any lighting for more than 48 hours.

Generator is probably the best bet. As far as how big of one you need add up all the wattage of the items you would be running. Circulation, filtration and lighting are all important.

When you know the wattage you need divide that by 1000 that is the Kw you will be using, but you would want some extra room, so buy a bigger generator than exactly what you are using.

The lights you mentioned above would use .45Kw

 

[Chris]

I used to keep my tank on a UPS, You could buy a small computer UPS to run a single pump and the heater. You can go to http://www.apc.com and use one of their calculators to figure out how big of a UPS you need. I did this for short power outages during the day, up to say 8 hours, while I was at work. Just thoughts.