Ahh Pwer Outage

[rhysiboy]

god last night was fun due to the bad weather yesterday in england a power pilon collapsed and my whole area was left without electricity for 8 hours! luckily we still had gas so i boiled some water and put hot water bottles and blankets over the tanks and they stayed the same temperature. They should make some sort of battery powered power heads for black outs

 

[James B]

Generators are your friend im lucky if we start having a major power outage i can go and grab a generator from work and use that to run my tanks

 

[Mr.September15]

Don't forget what happened to Ski, I think he lost some corals and stuff from his power outage and had to use his car battery >_<. I would hate to have no power

 

[tmreynolds]

Agreed, we're lucky here in that outages last a few hours maximum and seem to be very rare (touch wood). Its something we all take for granted nowadays i think.

 

[rhysiboy]

definately im just glad i had nothing 'alive' and of size in there otherwise i would of sat by it and useed my hand to fan the water and a torch for light

 

[SkiFletch]

Don't forget what happened to Ski, I think he lost some corals and stuff from his power outage and had to use his car battery >_<. I would hate to have no power

Yeah, 3.5 days, and I had to run the car with an inverter off the electrical system, battery would have worn out in about 8 hours for minimal powerheads only. Remember with extended power outages your first two priorities are heat and perhaps more important is flowrate. Without flow for extended times many corals will suffocate and die. If you only have a small battery backup power supply (like a UPS for a computer), run a small powerhead. I strongly reccomend people have at least one small powerhead running on a UPS or an alarm to wake themselves up if there's a power outage during the night. Dont bother with a heater, sump pump, or lights unelss you have a generator or inverter, they draw too much current for a battery alone. For heating, hot water bottles and blankets will suffice, thats a very good idea. Remember, many of our organisms can tolerate temps as low as 70f/20c for a short period of time. Also if you dont have any backup, be sure you spend some time manually stirring the tank with a kitchen spoon or something to simulate some flowrate and

After 3.5 days with limited functionality my tank was down to I think 60f/16c, might have been lower, I'm not sure. I lost my clam, elgance coral, and most of my tropical snails to the temperature and lack of lighting. And of course my first sea hare crawled into the un-protected inlet of the hastily thrown in emergency powerhead and got his face chopped up . All in all, not that bad considering I survived 3.5 days with only a few hundred watts of available power. Many people with no backup at all in my area lost their whole tanks, so I count myself innovative and lucky.

I'm glad to hear that you were able to cope Rhysiboy, power outages are never fun but at least you got through it

 

[demonmagus]

I don't think we have as many power outages in England, maybe that's why we're not prepared lol

 

[rhysiboy]

yer lol but sundays sposed to be like thrusday again so who knows. Also since im in th country it could of been of for a matter of days luckily it was only a minor breakage on one of the pilons. Spose is always good to give peopel advice with the unexpected

 

[James B]

a good bit of advice here i work with my step dad saturdays and the lowest of the low Honda generators can be got for about 50 to 100 quid i think (second hand) it may be a good idea for some of us UK lot to sort our selves out now ocs it looks a bit like power outages etc may become more common with this screwed up weather we keep getting

 

[steelhealr]

When the Eastern Seaboard was without power for a full day a few years ago, we had the house wired to be powered by a generator. A luxury, perhaps. Without heat or power in a blizzard? No. SH

 

[rhysiboy]

lol well we certainly dont have it as rough weather wise as you in america but we do have an awful lot of rain reminds me of the fact that every year people panik becuase of 2 " of snow yet other places have like 2 ft of snow and they dont panik. God save britania this screwed up lil country

 

[n3ont3tra]

The time we usually lose power is in the beginning and end of summer, which means I wouldn't have to worry about heat much. We lose power for a while, though, once for 1 day, many other times for 8 hours, and it's practically every thunderstorm, too.