Ice, Ice, Baby

No power would be bad news with a reef tank. Nice call on the generator.

 

Ya I had my generator and gave special instruction what to plug in if we lost power. I have been worrying all day sense I will be out of town until tomorrow. So far so good!

 

yeah, got to put my generator to use today too...had the return pump and heater running. Fortunately, got power back after a couple of hours.

 

yea a generater saved me a couple years ago when the power went out for a week. Ran my tanks and some space heaters. without it my reef would have been frozen. all reefers in our climate should have one.

 

Good reminder to everyone that has not given this much thought...you have hundreds, if not thousands invested in your tanks, power outages happen, protect your investment. Even neighborhoods with buried lines are not immune to loosing power.

--AJ

 

I have been without power since 7:00 pm generator is running great. Power to tank power to the computer power to the people.

 

We have a power inverter-runs off of your cars battery. A tad cheaper than a generator.....

 

They are actually really affordable, under $50.  I have had mixed success with power inverters; great for laptops and other general electronics, bad for powering a medium/large tank.  I have a Black & Decker inverter that's rated for 400 Watts (the biggest I could find) and I was not able to get it to support even 300W.  I was disappointed.  If you're going to rely on an inverter, make sure and test it to make sure that it can power your bare necessities (i.e. a heater and a couple of circulation pumps)...otherwise, you can end up with a false sense of security and get yourself into a bind when the time comes.  This would be a very acceptable solution for a nano or a small tank with low power requirements.
Maybe my experiences were based off of limitations of my vehicle or a poorly performing inverter or some other limitation.  I don't want to say that these are bad to use, just test them and make sure that they will support what you need before you rely on them as your emergency backup.  Also, think about...if I have no power in my house at all, am I going to want to use most or all of the power that I can get for my fish tank?  Just things to think about.
--AJ

 

Ya most inverters you find locally will not be able to power much and if you want one to power a decent size tank you are going to spend a lot. A guy I used to attend car shows with had a huge power inverter which could power a couple large kitchen appliances but not for the long haul. Of course that is not what he used it for but apparently he did try haha! I say decent generator with a full tank and maybe an extra 15 gallons of gas and you should be safe for a while.

 

Speaking of generators, what do you guys run your generator in? Do you have some kind of a cover that you put over it to shield it from the elements or what? I don't feel good about running it in the garage with the door open just because they emit so much carbon monoxide (more than running many cars I'm told). See a CPSC warning article here (http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/portgen.html). I had been looking for a canopy or cover for it, so I could run it out on the back deck (a place that's easily accessible and elevated) but more recently, I saw something online where a guy built a simple frame out of PVC and a cheap tarp. That's what I'm planning to do at this point; but I might change my mind again based on what I hear from everyone else.
And ditto on the Sta-Bil Foo...great stuff!  It's cheap and really extends the shelf life of gas.  I have two 5 gallon gas tanks...one that I keep full and the other that I use for the lawn mower, weed eater, snow blower, etc.  When one empties, I go and fill it back up again and use the new one as my full container, thus rotating my supply.  It takes me about a year to go through the 10 gallons in both containers.

--AJ

 

Luckly we just got power after 12hrs of not have it. Thanks to the ghetto engineering of Gered to tell me to heat water and put in in a jug and float it. I finally got the tank temps up in the 70-80 degree range this mourning and am expecting no lost.

 

Posted By AJ on 01/21/2010 02:52 PM
Speaking of generators, what do you guys run your generator in? Do you have some kind of a cover that you put over it to shield it from the elements or what?
Mine is still new in box down in Oskaloosa.  I need to bring it up sometime as it would have came in handy last night when the power went off for 5 hours.

 

I actually just went out and bought a 5000 watt generator today. The sad (well not really sad) thing about it, I didn't even get to use it! 5 minutes after buying it, my wife called and told me the power was back on! The salt tank got down to 74 and my freshwater got down to 72. She used a inverter to run an airpump for freshwater and a powerhead for salt. None of that crap no more! Go generator!

 

hey Sone wheres it at, incase you dont get it up there before i loose power /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif haha

 

a couple of other pointers.

candles under the tank work to add heat /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/biggrin.gif if you have acrylic, be careful.

there are battery back up air pumps that are cheap.

I have an 800 watt- 1600 peak inverter that can run my wife's hair straightner. built in heat sinc and all. wasn't that expensive .. you just have to hit it at the right sale


Finally, can we do a club buy on a natural gas auto power back up system ???? like for 1/10 th of the cost???