You never answered my questions or posted pics. Which corals survived this 4 day blackout with 30-40 degree temps since you failed to run heaters. What fish survived it?
Who said I was running 500W heaters? Even if I was my setup can easily handle it.
I think you’re giving the bad advice telling people to run DINK batteries with 1 gyre pump and NO HEATERS.
Having BOTH quality batteries and a back up generator will get them through the outage (and extended outages) when the gas is completely gone in 24-48 hrs in most cases.
I never said my tank survived a week of freezing temperatures on only 1 gyre pump. I also never said you don't need heaters.
What I said was cheap lead acid batteries will provide some water circulation for 4 days. All of this other long term grid down freezing temperature survivalist stuff was fabricated in your head.
As I've mentioned several times, the point of a battery backup is to provide circulation and gas exchange ONLY!!! I'm not always home or awake when the power goes out and the battery backup automatically kicks in the gyre providing water flow and gas exchange. That keeps my tank going on the single gyre until I can make better fixes. Last week was no exception. I was not right there every time the power went out. When I got to my tank, the gyre was working every time. That provided life support to the tank until I put my return pump and both 300 watt heaters on my portable generator. My tanks have been though power grid failures, a power strip burn out, and both the main 15A breaker as well as the GFCI outlets have tripped. The first time my tank lost power, I had no backup system and it took months for the tank to recover. Every since I've implemented an automatic battery backup, I've never lost a single coral or fish to a power loss. Even when the temperature was not ideal in the house. It is far, far more important to keep the water moving and oxygenated than it is to keep the temperature perfect.
My current automatic backup is a pair of $20, 7AH lead acid batteries and a $12 relay that has worked flawlessly since implementation. Running DC pumps directly off of DC batteries eliminates the waste of inverting and/or converting power between AC and DC. Running 1 gryre pump on 14AH of cheap batteries lasts me ~ 100 hours of run time. I could run both gyres, or the return pump on the same batteries, but for less than half the time. I don't because it is NOT NECESSARY. The tank will survive on a $60 to $100 backup just fine. So why would anyone use a ~$1000 lithium battery and inverter backup that you're advising and implying is a good use of money?
battery backups don’t last long enough. Waste of money.
Get a Power inverter and run off your car battery or get a real battery- LiFePO4 Lithium with 100AH
Your original post saying that a battery backup doesn't last long enough and a waste of money is terrible advice. For about the same price of single coral you can have a battery backup that may save your entire tank. It is really cheap insurance to have one and
absolutely not a waste of money.
I started a poll;
After the mass power outage in Texas it has brought new attention to what we use if the power fails. For my 220, I use a battery backup on a gyre wavemaker and keep a small generator on hand if the power outage lasts a long time. What do you use?
www.reef2reef.com
Currently, 000 reefers responded they use a large lithium battery. So apparently your opinion is far from the majority.
The last thing a new reefer needs is to read your post that a small battery backup is a waste of money. Anyone who doesn't have an automatic standby generator should really have automatic backup of some kind. The key word being automatic. Not go pull the battery from your car, or dig the inverters out of the closet, or drag the generator out of the shed. Anything that automatically puts oxygen into your water may be worth as much money as you have ever spent on everyting in your tank. You're taking a risk if you don't have one.
