Power out!!!

KillerReef

KillerReef

Wrasse-a-holic
Just found out my power is going to be out tomorrow for up to 6 hours. Wife forgot to tell me sooner. I'm a bit worried. Fortunately I am off work so I will be home the whole time. I'm thinking if I take water out of the sump every now and then and dump it into the display, this will help with the surface agitation. Also, will taking a straw and blowing into the DT help? I can also stir the surface up well. Temp should be ok but if it gets too warm, i can drop in some bags of ice.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Dave
 
Don't do the straw thing. You, like all the rest of us emit CO2, not O2. You can go to the LFS and pick up a bubbling aerator or two that is going to run off of batteries. There's also the car battery powered generators at home depot that could most likely run your return pump and skimmer for aeration. That should get you through the 6 hour electrical hiatus.
 
i wouldnt bother blowing through a straw for 6 hours lol, youd probably pass out after 5 minutes. Agitating the ater is your best bet, if you have about $50 to spare go buy a power inverter that plugs into your cigarette lighter in your car and run an extension cord to your tank and plug in a powerhead and aim it at the surface to create agitation. And for the future you will have this ready for any unscheduled power outages
 
thanks, the straw was my wife's idea, sounded good at the time. LOL

great suggestions guys, thanks. I will look into all of them. Unfortunately LFS doesn't open til 11 and power is scheduled to go out at 9, but home depot will be open for the other suggestions a lot earlier. Do they carry the power inverter at Home Depot? That sounds like the easiest, and probably least expensive option...
 
You can also heat or cool buckets of tank water in the bathtub. fill the tub with cold or hot water, sit the buckets in and stir them until you get to desired temp then return the water to your display. Make sure you stir the bucket water often because the colder water will stay on the bottom which will give you a false reading.
 
For what it's worth you don't breathe out that much more CO2 than standard air.

I would just use a battery operated air stone, they are about $18 at the LFS. You tank should be fine without power for a few hours until they open.
 
For 6 hours I would get an inverter. HD and lowes sells them.

Don't forget to start the car on occasion!

I would only run the return pump and nothing else in an effort to reduce the energy draw on your car battery.
 
got a battery powered air pump, was hoping to get 2 but they only had one, hoping that should suffice on my 80 gallon, plan to start it as soon as power goes off just to keep the O2 level steady...

Got some .5 liter water bottles in freezer if temp becomes an issue...

Thanks you everybody for the help...
 
success, power is back on, and everything looks good, used the battery operated air pump continuously and stirred the water with a spatula(don't tell my wife LOL) about every half hour...

Thanks for all the help!!
 
Killerreef you need to go down to bestbuy and get yourself a batter backup. I got mine for 50-70 bucks. It ran my 2 power heads for over 10 hours when our power was out during a storm. The other day i came home and the power was out because they where working on the lines because of the storm.
 
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