What Would You Do In A Power Cut?

[Amavi]

As the title states, what would you do in a powercut to keep things ticking over in your fish tank?

 

[slimeneo]

I have a UPS battery, an uninterrupted power supply that's connected to the filter, airstone and heater. So if there's actually an outage, my fish will be ok... for a few hours anyway (not sure how long it lasts tbh).

 

[iantaylor]

I wouldnt do any thing unless it was off for more than 24 hours, i wouldn't feed the fish

 

[tata]

I have a UPS battery, an uninterrupted power supply that's connected to the filter, airstone and heater. So if there's actually an outage, my fish will be ok... for a few hours anyway (not sure how long it lasts tbh).

Few hours? That should be a pretty expensive UPS.
For $100 I can buy a UPS that can handle aquarium equipment for 20/30 minutes, no more then that. So basically there is no point spending the money on a UPS.
At least on my country.

 

[slimeneo]

Well, I'm not quite sure how long it can run because after I got it, we never had any power outages here, lol. but yes, it is pretty expensive

 

[Aquascaper]

Go to the shed and wheel out the 3500w petrol generator, sit it outside the window and plug the reef tank in.....the other three tropical tanks can wait it out

 

[brian1]

Power cuts only last a couple of hours tops, water temperatures go down slow so won't bother the fish, just keep the filter wet....

 

[Aquascaper]

Power cuts only last a couple of hours tops

You obviously don't live in Scotland, we can, and do, get power cuts lasting days when the snows bad

 

[Loopy Lynda]

Had this happen once on my old tank. I filled a hot water bottle & taped it to the tank then wrapped the whole lot up in a blanket until the power came back on (about 12 hours). I managed to save about 95% of the fish, though it WAS a small tank so that may have helped .

 

[Essjay]

We had a planned power outage earlier this year as the local substation needed work on it. The power was off for 8 hours. Because we knew it was coming, I'd been feeding lightly for a couple of days. On the day itself, I had the gas fire on in the room with my 125 litre, though the kitchen tanks couldn't be kept warm this way. They didn't get very cold as the weather was mild. I have internal filters in all my tanks, so basically I did nothing. Being internals, the media was all under water. I didn't feed that day, and I just fed lightly the following day. I measured both ammonia and nitrite on the tanks a couple of times a day during the power outage and for several days after and never saw even a tiny blip of either in any tank.


Mind you, this was only for 8 hours in mild weather, if the power was off for days in mid winter I'd probably panic.

 

[Crossfire]

When I lose power, I stay up through the night and pour water through the filter every 15 minutes....
Worst night of my life

 

[slimeneo]

When I lose power, I stay up through the night and pour water through the filter every 15 minutes....
Worst night of my life

awww We haven't had a long power outage for awhile though. But I hear this winter is supposed to be horrible. Good thing I have a generator.

Prior to my UPS I would pour water into my filter also haha.

 

[brian1]

Power cuts only last a couple of hours tops

You obviously don't live in Scotland, we can, and do, get power cuts lasting days when the snows bad

True.....

 

[raptorrex]

depends on the ambient temp, really.
during winter I'd lag the tank (if i knew it was a 24 hour thing)
as for the filter, I'd use a car battery hooked up to a, in my case, 300w 12v inverter.
along with short feeding, that should see me through.