Backup power - what you got?
 

First year reefing and after a few of the natural disasters down south I got to wondering what might happen if I lose power. I've never really cared if I lost power until now... it would crush me to lose my fish and coral to an outage.

There seems to be no real consensus online so I'm interested to hear what others here are doing!

1. What do you use for backup power?
2. What equipment is plugged in to it?
3. Tank size?
4. Any other general prep?

I have a 3 kilowat generator that my husband plugs not only my 150 gal display tank, 75 gal refugium, 40 gal sump, 20 gal top off tank, 65 gal freshwater set-up, he also plugs in our refrigerator, tv and an outlet to the next door neighbour.

AquaAddict

I have a 3 kilowatt generator that my husband plugs not only my 150 gal display tank, 75 gal refugium, 40 gal sump, 20 gal top off tank, and 65 gal freshwater set-up, he also plugs in our refrigerator, tv and an outlet to the next door neighbour.

In North Vancouver, I highly recommend a generator. We have used ours 3/4 times in 2/3 years.

AquaAddict

I have two of those little battery air pumps that come on automatically if they sense a loss of power. That gives me lots of time to return home (assuming I'm out when it happens) and plug a couple essentials into a small generator. 225gal display, 100gal sump.

Battery air pump
 

Could you tell me where you bought the battery air pump from? Thanks

Reef Supplies and J&L have them.

Woah, that's pretty awesome! I'm in an apartment so I don't know that a generator would work unless I tossed it on the patio. :cry:

I know what I'm getting this weekend.... thanks for this!

I bought a battery powered air pump in the fishing section of Cabella's. Its awesome, 2 D batteries pump air through an airstone for about 12 hours. I've used it at least 10 times on my 125. For longer outages I have a generator but its still in the box, haven't had to bust that out yet...

Rocketfish power backup
 

"Rocketfish" computer power backup. return pump and wavemakers plugged in. says 75min power but if the lights go out the wavemakers go into night mode and then goes to 145mins. Never had the power go out here more than 40mins in my whole life living in Calgary.
https://i.imgur.com/eGTQJMgl.jpg

Back up battery
 

Great...thank you

Here's a fun thread from a couple years ago. Ahhh... those were good times.

That's 11 pages of insanity. I love BC but some aspects of services & roads are sketchy at best in winter.

Wardog beat me to it but yes J&L is where I bought mine.

7500 watt generator. It powers the tank entirely including lighting + fridge and freezer. One thing I did not realize after living my whole life in Mississauga where there never were long power failures is generators eat gas like crazy. Sure I can power everything but a full tank only lasts about 11-12hrs. I keep an extra 5 gallons around so I can always go 24hrs without leaving the house.

I was just reading about someone in Puerto Rico keeping their tank on a generator / solar panels for 40 days. If that happened here I'd probably run out of gas money before I lost the will to refill the generator twice a day.

I have a 250 galon and I have a 22kw honeywell generator that runs on natural gas. Im in a wooded area and we lose power almost every year now. You dont even know the power has gone out the lights flicker and the genset is on. It has enough power to run my whole house, sump and heat pump.

i just use an ice cap battery backup to run my gyres. they're supposedly good for 32 hours per gyre. hopefully i never have to test it.