Who came up with 76-78 temps?

[GARRIGA]

I’ve recently learned that a lot of reefers are having success keeping higher temperatures 80-81. My temp was swinging up to 81 and coral still looked great and growing well. I did get a chiller though bc I’m afraid of it getting any higher…

Chiller on battery backup something I’m considering as my biggest fear is a power outage during a hurricane. Haven’t looked at those since the 80s therefore time reeducate myself and hopefully find something that doesn’t draw much amps yet able to drop enough temps.

 

[Semper.Reefing]

Chiller on battery backup something I’m considering as my biggest fear is a power outage during a hurricane. Haven’t looked at those since the 80s therefore time reeducate myself and hopefully find something that doesn’t draw much amps yet able to drop enough temps.

Man I wish I could get a generac for the house one day! The paranoia from hurricane and tropical storms would go away haha. BRS jut had a big sale on their chillers so I hopped on that

 

[Subsea]

Heaters likely the number one source of malfunction that quickly wipe most tanks out from FW to reef.

I have received many shipments of live fish & live coral in 50 years of reefing: high temperature was the #1 cause of fatality. In 50 years of reefing, I have only lost livestock to cold once and that was in outside propagation tanks that got down to 48 degrees.

 

[GARRIGA]

Man I wish I could get a generac for the house one day! The paranoia from hurricane and tropical storms would go away haha. BRS jut had a big sale on their chillers so I hopped on that

No place in my townhouse for a generator. Only whole house option being a Tesla Wall and I’d likely need three of them. Way outside my budget. Although I hate being hot and this week saw highs of 97.

 

[GARRIGA]

I have received many shipments of live fish & live coral in 50 years of reefing: high temperature was the #1 cause of fatality. In 50 years of reefing, I have only lost livestock to cold once and that was in outside propagation tanks that got down to 48 degrees.

Experienced a northeastern in the 90s. Power outage several days. Temps got down to the mid 50s. No corals. Bunch of damsels, pair of maroons, snowflake and scarlet hermit and only lost one domino but was from all living in a bucket with nothing more than and air stone at my parents. I was surprised the cold didn’t kill them and don’t think the cold why the one perished. Way too many fish for a bucket. Surprised I didn’t lose them all.

 

[mousehunter]

While I would not want to run everything off it, given the value of the livestock in a tank, an automotive size lipo battery and a sine wave inverter would probably run a tank for a decent amount of time. IF you don't have to run a heater much...

But the real issue is not really hours but days. If you had to run 1000 watts of heaters, you are looking at over 2.5kwh per day. At that point, the price does add up quickly. The cheapest I have seen 5kwh of batteries is close to $1k - and you would still need $500-800 worth of other equipment to make that into a backup.

2 of the last 3 years I have had multi day blackouts during the winter (which is why I worry about keeping heaters on for extended periods of time - my house is going to get cold, we don't have natural gas as an option for heating). On the plus side, they were rolling blackouts - so I could get 15 minutes worth of charging done every 3 hours. Likewise, I could run an extension cord through a window and do short charging spurts off a portable generator. At least it is always fairly easy to heat an aquarium if you have electricity - my heat pumps have also failed me several times in the last 2 years during freezes. Now for outages during the summer. Honestly I have not researched just how much cooling you can get from a fan and evaporation. It might be a low watt way to keep an aquarium from boiling.