Power outage battery options

[RAJOD]

I'm trying to think of a easy way to keep the fish alive during short power outages.
The power is never out more than 6 hours, at least in the past 8 years.

So I just need something to add some oxygen and flow for maybe 6 hours.

For something so common there are very limited options.

1. Airstone pump/batter - too small for 300 gallons
2. Vortec mp40/batter - wont work on 1 inch thick tanks and has to have power cord on outside. I want to put it above the tank.

3. Bait keep alive pump. Really would be great but most have to be inside the tank which would be ugly. This is a possibility
http://www.livebaitlarry.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=266


4. UPC + powerhead that can suck in air and pump water. I've heard UPCs dont put out a sine wave so AC motors don't work well with them.

5. a DC powerhead hooked to a lawnmower battery.

6. Generator - no good as you have to be there to start it up.

I just need a small pump to put enough 02 in the water to keep them alive for 6 hours or so. I need to to be auto sensing to turn on when power is out.

Any other options?

 

[ElmoC]

Older model UPS didn't produce a clean sine wave. Newer ones do as long as you don't get the absolute bottom quality unit out there.

 

[dkeller_nc]

And - it is completely unnecessary to have a pure sine wave inverter to run a common AC permanent magnet motor like a hydor koralia.

If you want an all-in-one solution, you can buy an inverter/charger from a place like the inverterstore.com or West Marine. You have to hunt for a reasonably priced unit, most are way over-powered (and expensive) for the purpose. But there are several that are sub-$300. These charge your connected battery when line power is available, and switch to battery when it's not. Connect one of these to a trolling motor battery, and you're good for a couple of days as long as the connected equipment is less than 20-30 watts.

 

[origreefer]

And - it is completely unnecessary to have a pure sine wave inverter to run a common AC permanent magnet motor like a hydor koralia.

If you want an all-in-one solution, you can buy an inverter/charger from a place like the inverterstore.com or West Marine. You have to hunt for a reasonably priced unit, most are way over-powered (and expensive) for the purpose. But there are several that are sub-$300. These charge your connected battery when line power is available, and switch to battery when it's not. Connect one of these to a trolling motor battery, and you're good for a couple of days as long as the connected equipment is less than 20-30 watts.

I agree with above. Always better to have more reserve than you think you need. I loose power all the time, sometimes for days and week+. Generators suck. $4 per gallon gas to run a pump/heater is overkill. I installed a solar system with inverter and 8 Golf cart batteries (800AmpHours). I can run my tank for weeks on that and have several times needed to for days at a time. But for those who only need backup less than a day, a good deep cycle battery and a inverter/charger would be perfect. My tank draws 3amps with everything running. In power outages I can cut that down to 1amp, running heater and return pump only and skimmer for a few hours. 1000w inverters are fairly cheap. Figure out how many watts the items you want to run add up to, and get a inverter that's 25% bigger than that.

 

[ElmoC]

the inverterstore.com

couldn't get to inverterstore.com, but theinverterstore.com worked.

 

[kenman345]

Thanks for the advice, I am also in the market for a battery backup and am fairly unsure what I will go with. I dont have the room to do a very huge system, so I've read about these battery air pumps that one can use that will power itself on when it loses power. I was thinking about modifying it to use a much bigger power supply than just normal D batteries, but I will still need to figure out a heating solution. I've only ever had my power go out for 30 minutes or less, except during Hurricane Sandy when it was out for 23 hours. We get <5 minute outages 1-2 times a year, if at all. Our power lines here are underground so it's fairly consistent like this for the last 14 years.

Any advice you can provide would be great. I would really prefer to have things set up to last 2-3 days, I am using a reefkeeper Elite so I am thinking of rigging up a relay switch to allow it to know when power is lost and use an alarm to disable some devices that I have through the battery backup but not as necessary (or maybe just turn them to work intermittently once I have a chance to get to the tank). I think this will cover even the most unforeseeable outage in my area as they usually shut the power down when they expect something major to happen (Sandy) and turn it back on after confirming everything is fine (thus the 23 hours down during sandy was actually just a precaution).