Reef Pilot's Undersea Oasis

[MitchM]

I thought the same way and wasn't comfortable with it until I was home during a few power outages.
Now I don't give power outages a second thought.
Also, at my location, outages have lasted for a couple of days.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by MitchM

I thought the same way and wasn't comfortable with it until I was home during a few power outages.
Now I don't give power outages a second thought.
Also, at my location, outages have lasted for a couple of days.

Do you have a fully automatic cut-over to your generator back-up that will function when you are not home (and can't get home for a week)? And how much did all this cost?

[MitchM]

Yes, the generator cuts in about 10 seconds after the main power supply fails and switches off about 30 seconds after the power supply is restored.
The generator switches on every 7 days for a 10 minute period to perform maintenance checks. All automatic.
The size of mine is 13KW on natural gas. (14KW on propane) I have ours directly plumbed to natural gas.

The cost for it hooked up 6 years ago was about $4,000.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by MitchM

Yes, the generator cuts in about 10 seconds after the main power supply fails and switches off about 30 seconds after the power supply is restored.
The generator switches on every 7 days for a 10 minute period to perform maintenance checks. All automatic.
The size of mine is 13KW on natural gas. (14KW on propane) I have ours directly plumbed to natural gas.

The cost for it hooked up 6 years ago was about $4,000.

That does sound good and cost is reasonable,... if it all works as it should. At our office we had auto UPS and a generator back-up system. But I can tell you also that it didn't always work and usually required some intervention by our IT staff. So pardon me if I am a little skeptical.

I still have a real problem with a generator running in my absence, and not really knowing for sure if everything is working properly. I would still be stressed out about that. Maybe my fears are totally unreasonable, but just saying how I would feel. I guess I just don't trust technology..., maybe because I worked with it all my career...

I have had short (up to a few hours) outages happen in my absence, and no harm occurred. I do have my Apex running all my pumps and skimmer (with 5 min delay on start-up), and it tells me that I had an outage (also know it when I can get through on the internet). So far that has all worked fine.

And my son lives 20 min away, so if a serious prolonged outage happens, I could walk him through setting up my back-up batteries. I have not had to do that yet.

Anyway, like I said, just another thing to worry about with the tanks. At the moment, though, I have other issues with the tank parameters that I have to deal with, and want to get my corals looking good again.

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions.

[MitchM]

Anytime.
We're pretty remote for assistance here, so any potential damage from a power outage would quickly surpass the cost of the generator for us.
If you have resources that are close, that should be be taken into account.

[Reef Pilot]

Quick update: Was not the best summer for my tank. Between my flying and our cabin, was away a lot this summer, and the tank suffered a bit. Biggest problem was my KH dropped to 5 before I realized that my dosing line was plugged. A lot of my acros had burnt tips as a result, and I lost a few of my prized ones.

Hair algae also got out of hand a bit, which was caused primarily (I think) because I had earlier disconnected my bio pellet reactor and allowed the N03 to get up to about 30 ppm.

Anyway, everything is under control again and SPS are recovering well. Still don't have the bright colors I had before, but are definitely coming back.

I want to do a tank reset, to rearrange my SPS, so I can properly clean my glass and rocks again. But will be going to Maui for a couple weeks in Nov, and don't want to make any major changes until then. So maybe after that.

I am a lazy pic taker, but here are a couple I just took today.

My Pearlberry has come a long ways from the tiny frag it was last winter.


My Orange Digi frags are turning into colonies on my neglected frag rack.


Not exactly sure, but I think this is some kind of sponge that just appeared on my rocks.

[Slyguy00]

Pearl Berry is lookin awesome Walter!