Blackout!!!
 

Who else got hit by the blackout today??? I'm in south van, and my wife called me this morning around 11am (I had school today!). Lasted until 4PM!

I had a bit of a flood, because my sump couldnt handle the water skimmed from the display tank. Got my wife to use the turkey baster to create 'some' flow on the SPS. Luckily I do have a battery air pump, that kicked in when the power went out, so the fish were ok.

So what are some backup battery options? I dont think the APC UPS computer backups will work, since they're designed to last for only about 30mins (plus they're expensive!).

I saw the Motomaster Eliminator 1,200A PowerBox (Product# 11-1815-0). Does anyone know if this can be setup as an auto backup power supply?

The Marine Fish annual magazine has an article on such events...2006 magazine. I will check it again and put some ideas tomorrow.

One of the ideas i do remember was using bike pump (foot pump) for aeration


Js

We were lucky!!! Power lines are under ground. Hope all are OK. Help if we can! You can get a deep cycle RV battery and a DC/AC converter. The eliminator will work well. May not power the MH but will handle a heater and some power heads. Will depend on your power requirements. Corals and that should be ok for a couple days with low lights.

I had the power off between 3:30 and 9:30 (15 minutes ago). The tank only dropped a couple degrees and I added some hot water and mixed it in good and the tank went back up to 79.

With a Tunze 6060, the power needed is only 13w/hr so if you use even a small backup supply, it would give you great circulation for hours. I think the Eliminator was on special this week at Canadian Tire. In South Burnaby, we were lucky & our power was unaffected, although our friends down the hill lost power for about 6 hours last morning.

Anthony

I used the big powerbox eliminator, plus a smaller version and a big deep cell battery with a converter. I had no power for over 15 hrs or so. I ended up renting a gas generator when my power supplies started to run out. All in all, a pain in the butt, but ususaly power is not out this long.

The generator was great tho, recharging all my backups and I could watch TV and such :) woohoo

I live in the sticks and get quite a few power outages ranging from an hour or so to 4 days. I would not go without a generator. If your worried about noise go with the Honda. You have to buck up for them but also have multiple uses besides like camping.