Haven't had a lengthy outage here in some time, but when it did happen I used one of my truck batteries and a small inverter to run a powerhead and my skimmer. I also have the PennPlax battery powered air pump that senses power loss and kicks in automatically. The car/truck battery & inverter is not a long term solution but it's relatively cheap and works well to run a powerhead or two for quite a while. Downside is, it's not automatic, you need to be home to set it up. Also wouldn't try to run a heater too long unless you have a very large battery. I'm able to run my skimmer since it's old tech air driven (limewood air diffusers), the small powerhead and air pump only use around 11 watts.
|