Hi everyone
Thought I'd share my experience going through a prolonged power outage, in case it can help anyone in the future.
I live in LA, and a large storm knocked out power at 1:15p yesterday. It came back on at 1130am this morning.
I have 3 tanks; Red Sea reefer 350, IM 30gal long, and a custom 70 gal frag tank.
The frag tank and the Red Sea both have gyre pumps connected to ice cap backup batteries.
The batteries had enough juice to keep surface agitation and flow for the full 22 hours.
The 30 gallon, I placed two battery powered air stones I had standing by.
Keeping temp was the biggest challenge. I don't have any battery backup for the heaters. My stove runs on gas so I placed 3 large pots of water on the stove on low heat. Then I filled a dozen plastic bags (4mm thick) meant for frags with water and cooked them till hot. As the tanks got colder I used hotter bags and swirled around a bit.
Unfortunately it meant that I had to constantly be heating up bags while others floated in the tank. No sleep for 22 hours, but once the power came back on, I had no fish, invert, or coral deaths in 3 tanks.
Before I turned the returns back on, I did water changes from the sumps since I was less vigilant about keeping it warmer. I was floating bags in the sump too though.
1 hour after power came back on:
Red Sea
IM 30L
Frag tank
I'm incredible happy that I had the backup batteries for the gyres and the air stones standing by. That, combined with the hot water bags saved my tanks.
Definitely a challenge I would not like to face again! Next time maybe I buy a geni!
Thought I'd share my experience going through a prolonged power outage, in case it can help anyone in the future.
I live in LA, and a large storm knocked out power at 1:15p yesterday. It came back on at 1130am this morning.
I have 3 tanks; Red Sea reefer 350, IM 30gal long, and a custom 70 gal frag tank.
The frag tank and the Red Sea both have gyre pumps connected to ice cap backup batteries.
The batteries had enough juice to keep surface agitation and flow for the full 22 hours.
The 30 gallon, I placed two battery powered air stones I had standing by.
Keeping temp was the biggest challenge. I don't have any battery backup for the heaters. My stove runs on gas so I placed 3 large pots of water on the stove on low heat. Then I filled a dozen plastic bags (4mm thick) meant for frags with water and cooked them till hot. As the tanks got colder I used hotter bags and swirled around a bit.
Unfortunately it meant that I had to constantly be heating up bags while others floated in the tank. No sleep for 22 hours, but once the power came back on, I had no fish, invert, or coral deaths in 3 tanks.
Before I turned the returns back on, I did water changes from the sumps since I was less vigilant about keeping it warmer. I was floating bags in the sump too though.
1 hour after power came back on:
Red Sea
IM 30L
Frag tank
I'm incredible happy that I had the backup batteries for the gyres and the air stones standing by. That, combined with the hot water bags saved my tanks.
Definitely a challenge I would not like to face again! Next time maybe I buy a geni!