Prepare for Sandy!

Damn! I will be on vacation... lucky enough my brother is house sitting which most of you know is also a reefer. Which is very good but I hate to leave him with that possible scramble for power...
 
I live in a condo and I will not go crazy like I did last time to keep my tank alive. I'd rather move out and buy a house first. With that said, is there anyone out there with a generator, etc that would like to host my corals and maybe fish in case power goes out?
 
terahz said:
Alright guys, this is no joke.
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Good thread Georgi. :thumbsup:

Myself, I broke down Wednesday night and got a generator - a Honda EU200i.
Had them to send it priority overnight, so it should arrive today.

Yesterday I went out to get some supplies, and just because I had shelled out so must for shipping, I checked on generators available locally. Apparently there has already been a run on them. If you want one, you better act FAST. Home Depot was out, but was anticipating more to come in last night. So be QUICK folks.

Also, I've heard that Brandemans in Norwalk stocks the Honda's and they MAY still have some since they are really a paint store, and not the first place people would look for a generator.
 
It's not THAT hard to keep your tank going through a muli-day power loss. Your can cut back on everything but heat and water flow. No lights, skimmers, etc. Don't feed anything. And set your water temp to 70 degrees (or less). And if it's cold, wrap your tank in newspapers and/or blankets.

Supplying power to a limited function tank (as described above) is not as hard as you might think. What I'm about to suggest MIGHT toast some pumps because it does not supply pure sine-wave current. But it works just fine for my Eheim pumps and Vortechs...

Get yourself an "inverter". They'll have them at Sears and automotive parts stores and will cost way less than $100. They can be hooked up to the battery in your car, or to a stand-alone car battery. The inverter will have AC sockets on it that you can plug your tank into. If you hook an inverter up to your car battery, you have to leave the car running continuously and have a REALLY long, properly rated, extension cord. And if are using stand alone car batteries, you'll need to know how many Kilowatt hours the battery holds. And technically you should not have a car battery indoors because of the noxious fumes they can release. So you'll need an extension cord for that too.

Inverters are measured in the number of watts they can supply, so you'll need to know how many watts you need. Just add up the total wattage of all the stuff you'll be providing power to. If some of the equipment only provides an amperage (amps) rating and not watts, just multiply the amps required by number of the volts it runs on (usually 120) and you'll have the wattage.

So to put it all together, I got some big marine batteries (like car batteries but bigger) that deliver 0.7 kilowatt hours. That means it'll supply 700 watts for an hour. Or 1,400 for 30 minutes. Or 70 watts for 10 hours. Making sense? Hope so. Let's keep going...

And the equipment I want to keep going is a heater (100 watts) and one Vortech MP10 (8 to 18 watts, depending on speed). My Eheim 1260 return pump is 65 watts. So to minimize watts needed I'll turn off my return pump, move the heater out of the sump and into the tank, and set my MP10 to its slowest speed. Maybe also move the MP10 nearer the surface to maximize gas exchange. Then I'll turn off ALL the other equipment, set my heater to 70, and wrap the tank with newspaper. That is a total of 8 watts when the heater is not on, 108 watts when it is.

That means that I needed to buy an inverter that is rated for at least 108 watts (they all are). And when I hooked that up to the 0.7 kwatt marine battery, I can run the tank for roughly 87 hours if the heater never has to turn on. I calculated that by dividing 700 watt hours (the battery) by 8 watts (the MP10). If the heat is on all the time that number goes down to 6.5 hours (700 divided by 108). So reality will be between those two numbers, depending on how often - and how long - the heater comes one.

Granted - this was just for a little 33g tank. But the solution scales. Just do the math. Hope that helps. :)
 
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scolley said:
It's not THAT hard to keep your tank going through a muli-day power loss. Your can cut back on everything but heat and water flow. No lights, skimmers, etc. Don't feed anything. And set your water temp to 70 degrees (or less). And if it's cold, wrap your tank in newspapers and/or blankets.

Supplying power to a limited function tank (as described above) is not as hard as you might think. What I'm about to suggest MIGHT toast some pumps because it does not supply pure sine-wave current. But it works just fine for my Eheim pumps and Vortechs...

Get yourself an "inverter". They'll have them at Sears and automotive parts stores and will cost way less than $100. They can be hooked up to the battery in your car, or to a stand-alone car battery. The inverter will have AC sockets on it that you can plug your tank into. If you hook an inverter up to your car battery, you have to leave the car running continuously and have a REALLY long, properly rated, extension cord. And if are using stand alone car batteries, you'll need to know how many Kilowatt hours the battery holds. And technically you should not have a car battery indoors because of the noxious fumes they can release. So you'll need an extension cord for that too.

Inverters are measured in the number of watts they can supply, so you'll need to know how many watts you need. Just add up the total wattage of all the stuff you'll be providing power to. If some of the equipment only provides an amperage (amps) rating and not watts, just multiply the amps required by number of the volts it runs on (usually 120) and you'll have the wattage.

So to put it all together, I got some big marine batteries (like car batteries but bigger) that deliver 0.7 kilowatt hours. That means it'll supply 700 watts for an hour. Or 1,400 for 30 minutes. Or 70 watts for 10 hours. Making sense? Hope so. Let's keep going...

And the equipment I want to keep going is a heater (100 watts) and one Vortech MP10 (8 to 18 watts, depending on speed). My Eheim 1260 return pump is 65 watts. So to minimize watts needed I'll turn off my return pump, move the heater out of the sump and into the tank, and set my MP10 to its slowest speed. Maybe also move the MP10 nearer the surface to maximize gas exchange. Then I'll turn off ALL the other equipment, set my heater to 70, and wrap the tank with newspaper. That is a total of 8 watts when the heater is not on, 108 watts when it is.

That means that I needed to buy an inverter that is rated for at least 108 watts (they all are). And when I hooked that up to the 0.7 kwatt marine battery, I can run the tank for roughly 87 hours if the heater never has to turn on. I calculated that by dividing 700 watt hours (the battery) by 8 watts (the MP10). If the heat is on all the time that number goes down to 6.5 hours (700 divided by 108). So reality will be between those two numbers, depending on how often - and how long - the heater comes one.

Granted - this was just for a little 33g tank. But the solution scales. Just do the math. Hope that helps. :)
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Quoting this and putting it in its own post on the CTARS board. Will prob help a lot of people. Thanks a bunch
 
Very nice write up Steve!

Just want to add a couple of details so that people can size things accordingly.

With only one MP10 drawing 8W power, if the inverter is way oversized (say 500W and above), it is very likely that your system will be as little as 50% efficient, so you just list about 40 hours, and that is certainly enough to make a difference between alive tank and fish stew. Most inverter efficiency curves that I've seen get to the higher 90% when the load is at least 35% and sometimes drops again when it goes to 80-90%.

What I'm trying to say is, don't go out getting a 1KW rated inverter if you're going to draw 100W at max, because your 6.5 hours of time from one marine battery can go down to 4 easily. Unfortunately most sellers don't have efficiency graphs, so choose wisely.

Another thing that might not be as obvious is wire gauge. Let's say you draw 100W from a 12V battery and you have 10ft of 20AWG wire connecting the inverter to your battery. Well, you just lost 14W just in that wire. On a 24V battery it is not as bad, but you still want to keep wire gauge in mind, especially with lower voltages. Try to keep your wires as short and as thick as possible!

Also, don't forget to think about yourself too, not just the fish tank :)
 
On a side note, please don't run your vortechs from an inverter. The pumps can happily run directly on 12V DC.
 
terahz said:
On a side note, please don't run your vortechs from an inverter. The pumps can happily run directly on 12V DC.
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Georgi - that's worth clarifying...

I've had my Vortech power supply plugged into an inverter power and it worked fine. What exactly are you suggesting as an alternative? Please keep in mind that your audience may not be as electrically savvy as you are, and may need a lot of detail. I would. ;)
 
The Vortechs have a 12V jack in their controllers designed for their battery backup. It works with just about any 12V battery. You can even feed 24V directly where the PSU goes and it will work too. We actually had a demo at Joe's house on how to do this. In any case, here is a thread from RC on it: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2029180

There are more detailed ones on other forums, but I'll just let people google them. It comes down to buying a radio shack 1.3mm barrel jack (and I'd recommend a fuse) and wiring it with the battery. That's all there is to it.
 
terahz said:
It works with just about any 12V battery. You can even feed 24V directly where the PSU goes and it will work too. We actually had a demo at Joe's house on how to do this.
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Yeah, I remember that. However, if you don't feel like getting all the parts and doing the wiring, you can also just plug the Vortech power supply into an inverter. I've done it. Works fine.
 
scolley said:
if you don't feel like getting all the parts and doing the wiring, you can also just plug the Vortech power supply into an inverter. I've done it. Works fine.
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Of course, I didn't mean it will not work. Just that with 10 minutes of work you can avoid doing 12VDC -> 110VAC -> 12VDC waisting energy in the process.

Latest update is we'll get hit with about 80mph winds Monday evening. Good luck everyone!
 
Hope everyone made out alright, I know a lot of you on the coast still don't have power. I'm about 15 mins out of Bridgeport and came back online already, no loss to the tank. Wish you all the same.
 
Running my vortechs on batteries. Water temp is 70F. Zoas are closed up, but acros seem fine. We'll see...
 
gmate said:
Hope everyone made out alright, I know a lot of you on the coast still don't have power. I'm about 15 mins out of Bridgeport and came back online already, no loss to the tank. Wish you all the same.
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Thanks Glenn. Unlike Georgi - who seems to have things under control - I got lucky myself. No power loss. That puts me in the lucky 13% of Westport.

Hoping good things for everyone else. :)
 
Power was just restored at my house! The 4 HP server UPS batteries where depleted after just 24 hours so that will need some work when I get back. (Only running a maxijet!!)

A HUGE thanks to my brother for looking after my tank while I am on vacation... Still am!! Hahaha

Love my apex which has been emailing the tanks temp every 15 mins since the power was restored.

Going to slowly raise the temp back up. during the outage the temp dropped to 65, how long should I take to get the temp back up?!
 
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