How bad would a week power outage be to you?

[Art]

How bad would a week-long power outage be to your tank?

Share how you’re dealing with this.

 

[ayman.roshdy]

Hmm, good question, so let me break the answer into the following categories:

• Light is needed for the plants photosynthesis
  • For low tech plants, there is no issue, some ambient light from the nearby window can do the trick
  • For high tech plants, the first thing I will do is to stop the CO2 to slow down the plants growth and accordingly can use the ambient light as well
  • Another approach will be using a battery powered lamp for a smaller photo period, for example 2 - 3 hours per day
  • Decreasing the light will impact the plants growth and colors for sure, but nothing can't be fixed as long as the plants are still alive
• Oxygen for the fish
  • I saw a couple of videos online where we can actually use two air tubes plus a plastic bottle and connect them in a way so that the water comes out of the tank goes through the bottle and into the tank again, this can be used for surface agitation and accordingly introduce the needed Oxygen, if a single bottle is not enough then we can use multiple bottles, or just steer the water ourselves every couple of hours
  • There are also battery powered air pumps and USB pumps that can be charged using power banks
• Filtration
  • Beneficial bacteria needs air, hence we can use some of the filter media inside the above mentioned water bottle so that the beneficial bacteria gets the needed air for the biological filtration
  • For the mechanical filtration, I assume we can skip this during the power outage, but if we need to do it then just place some sponges or filter pads inside the above mentioned bottle
• Temperature
  • This will be tricky, specially in winter in cold places, in my country the winter is not very cold so I don't have to worry about the temperature
  • But in cold places, this needs some action plan, I don't think heating some water and adding to the tank is a good option because hot water doesn't have Oxygen and accordingly I will be causing Oxygen issues that I don't want to do, so perhaps adding the hot water into a closed plastic bottle and add the bottle to the tank to heat the tank water, this will need a lot of effort as the water inside the bottle will cool down very fast so will have to replace the bottle with fresh hot water several times per day

Of course all of the above works for 1 - 2 tanks max, if we have more tanks then an electric generator with the needed gas/gasoline must be handy, many people whom I follow on YouTube keep this because of the storm/hurricane seasons, in this case these are a must have

 

[RazzVegas]

I voted it would be risky. The good thing about todays equipment, its much more efficient than 20 or 30 years ago i think. My lights, filters, powerhead and doser runs around 2 amps. Maybe a bit less. I dont run a heater since I live in the desert. A small generator will keep everything going. I can even lower the wattage of my lights by dimming them a bit if needed to.

 

[Immortal1]

Been there, done that. Derecho killed power to the house for 6 days. My little Honda 2000 got a real workout but faired just fine.
Have a rather large computer network backup powering the entire aquarium system. Can run 2-3 hours before I really worry.

 

[Art]

Hmm, good question, so let me break the answer into the following categories:

• Light is needed for the plants photosynthesis
  • For low tech plants, there is no issue, some ambient light from the nearby window can do the trick
  • For high tech plants, the first thing I will do is to stop the CO2 to slow down the plants growth and accordingly can use the ambient light as well
  • Another approach will be using a battery powered lamp for a smaller photo period, for example 2 - 3 hours per day
  • Decreasing the light will impact the plants growth and colors for sure, but nothing can't be fixed as long as the plants are still alive
• Oxygen for the fish
  • I saw a couple of videos online where we can actually use two air tubes plus a plastic bottle and connect them in a way so that the water comes out of the tank goes through the bottle and into the tank again, this can be used for surface agitation and accordingly introduce the needed Oxygen, if a single bottle is not enough then we can use multiple bottles, or just steer the water ourselves every couple of hours
  • There are also battery powered air pumps and USB pumps that can be charged using power banks
• Filtration
  • Beneficial bacteria needs air, hence we can use some of the filter media inside the above mentioned water bottle so that the beneficial bacteria gets the needed air for the biological filtration
  • For the mechanical filtration, I assume we can skip this during the power outage, but if we need to do it then just place some sponges or filter pads inside the above mentioned bottle
• Temperature
  • This will be tricky, specially in winter in cold places, in my country the winter is not very cold so I don't have to worry about the temperature
  • But in cold places, this needs some action plan, I don't think heating some water and adding to the tank is a good option because hot water doesn't have Oxygen and accordingly I will be causing Oxygen issues that I don't want to do, so perhaps adding the hot water into a closed plastic bottle and add the bottle to the tank to heat the tank water, this will need a lot of effort as the water inside the bottle will cool down very fast so will have to replace the bottle with fresh hot water several times per day

Of course all of the above works for 1 - 2 tanks max, if we have more tanks then an electric generator with the needed gas/gasoline must be handy, many people whom I follow on YouTube keep this because of the storm/hurricane seasons, in this case these are a must have

Thanks. I didn't know about the two bottle trick. To me, a battery-powered airs pump is probably the most important item for the fish. My filter bacteria would likely be goners if I don't have a plan to provide electricity to the filter.

 

[Art]

I voted it would be risky. The good thing about todays equipment, its much more efficient than 20 or 30 years ago i think. My lights, filters, powerhead and doser runs around 2 amps. Maybe a bit less. I dont run a heater since I live in the desert. A small generator will keep everything going. I can even lower the wattage of my lights by dimming them a bit if needed to.

I'm similar to you except not in the desert but in a hot climate during the summer.

What do you have set up? A small generator for this?

 

[Art]

Been there, done that. Derecho killed power to the house for 6 days. My little Honda 2000 got a real workout but faired just fine.
Have a rather large computer network backup powering the entire aquarium system. Can run 2-3 hours before I really worry.

Is that what's called a UPS? I often wondered if that would be sufficient to run my filter. The problem is it won't run for days.

People don't realize how cheap a small generator is these days. When I was back in Miami, I had a small one from Home Depot that I bought for a couple hundred dollars. When you compare the amount of money I have in the tank, it's a no-brainer.

My problem was the evil eye looks from my wife when she was sweating without AC but my tank was running just fine!

 

[ayman.roshdy]

Is that what's called a UPS? I often wondered if that would be sufficient to run my filter. The problem is it won't run for days.

People don't realize how cheap a small generator is these days. When I was back in Miami, I had a small one from Home Depot that I bought for a couple hundred dollars. When you compare the amount of money I have in the tank, it's a no-brainer.

My problem was the evil eye looks from my wife when she was sweating without AC but my tank was running just fine!

UPS devices are used for computers for ages now, they are like a big battery that collects power and on power outage starts providing the collected power to the connected device instantaneously, and you can connect any device to them (filter, air pump, heater ... etc.), but they can provide power for a few hours maximum and of course the more devices you connect the faster the power is consumed, and I believe they are much more expensive than generators, power generators are a must in areas where storms and hurricanes are frequent