Power Outage Question

[Reefing8EZ]

I receieved a notice from my electric company that there is a planned power outage for maintenance today. It will be off from 9am-3pm. Will my tank be ok with no power for 6 hours?

Thanks in advance!

 

[cdness]

6 hours is a long time...

I wrote an article awhile back on reacting to power loss. Check it out for some options to protect the tank:

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/reef-aquarium-discussion/73699-reacting-loss-power.html

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I think you would be fine if your tank can stay warm and oxygenated.

Wrap your tank is blankets to maintain the temp (if it's cold where you are) and about every 30 minutes I would spend about 2-3 minutes filling a jug or something with tank water and pouring it right back in over and over.

 

[PhelpsTanks]

I think you would be fine if your tank can stay warm and oxygenated.

Wrap your tank is blankets to maintain the temp (if it's cold where you are) and about every 30 minutes I would spend about 2-3 minutes filling a jug or something with tank water and pouring it right back in over and over.

+1 on what revhtree said!

I went through 3 power outages within the last couple months, one being 23 hours long (lightning hit a main transformer). All I did was wrap the tank with blankets and used a turkey baster and container of tank water to mix (oxygenate) the water every couple hours. Best wishes for you and your tank!

 

[Reefing8EZ]

Thanks! I think im going to rent a generator for today and buy one later on for future outages.

 

[LegoZ81]

you might want to make sure you get an inverter generator, my "cheap" generator is power right off of the generator and is not clean enough to run impeller pumps. I have to run power thru a power conditioning UPS to run my pumps

 

[Mike&Terry]

It is great that you actually considered the impact on your livestock with this power outage. Many folks just don't even think about it until an outage happens to them and they suffer losses.

As oxygen can be depleted rather quickly depending on how heavily a tank is stocked, aeration is our first priority. We have our return pump and one of our (2) skimmers on battery backup for short-term outages (less than 6 hours) and a gas generator for longer outages. There is a lot of construction going in our area, and it is not uncommon to have a power outage that lasts an hour or 2 a couple of times a month (sometimes more). In those instances, our battery backup kicks in automatically. We also keep a couple of these in our refugium and sump area:

Silent Air® B11 Series Battery Operated Aquarium Air Pumps, Single Outlet, UL Listed

We have a couple of Azoo Battery Backup Pumpsand keep one running on our QT system at all times:

We also keep a few simple battery air pumps on hand as well since they are cheap.

We lost power for 3.5 days at the end of August due to hurricane Irene. We made use of all of these items during that time and even loaned one of our Azoo's to our neighbor because he had never thought about the importance of aeration during an outage.

Several members in our local reef club lost everything during that outage mainly due to lack of oxygen. On the other hand, several members who had the forethought to purchase the cheap battery air pumps weathered the situation with minimal impact.