making an investment in battery powered air pumps...

[Magnum Man]

live in the country, & don't often have power interruptions... in fact a couple years ago, they put windmills in our neighborhood, & used our gravel road to transport the big pieces, so the local power company decided to burry our powerline... we had about a mile of dedicated power line to our house buried for free to us ( that's a lot of single use power poles ) big weight off our shoulders... but our buried line connects to a multi home aerial line a mile & half down the way...
right now I have 4 bigger tanks I consider close to done, that are fully stocked, & I have a tendency to over filter & over aerate, because of how heavily they are stocked, & most are river fish... it works great, as long as there is power... so I've started buying 2 pumps per month, until I get enough for 2 of these pumps for each tank... also a full bank of rechargeable batteries for them, & a "D" cell charger for them... I do have a generator for the house, but it's not automatic, & I have a tendency not to hook it up & start it, unless I have an expectancy the power will be off for a long time... these pumps could work between power outage, & either it coming back on, or it being off long enough that I start the generator... just another thing to prep for, just in case...

 

[Ceez]

Been thinking a lot about this myself. Thinking about a "pass through power station". I could plug in my fish room to the pass through and in the event of an outage it would still power everything for about 2 days. Then if the power didn't come back on for 24hrs i could buy a generator and power the pass through with that....lol idk what to do but I have given it quite a bit of thought. Think all this talk of war and everything that's been going on politically has gotten the best of me, made me crazy .

I'm wondering how others are prepared for a longer outage, possibly a few days to a week?

 

[GaryE]

I just got rid of a battery powered pump.

To me, you have a generator, or a dance and some sacrifices to appease the gods. I stock lightly and have fish that tolerate the cool side of the tropics, but in a real disaster, doom and gloom will come.

 

[Back in the fold]

That’s a pretty good plan you have going there Man . I’m impressed !

 

[GaryE]

That’s a pretty good plan you have going there Man . I’m impressed !

I would need a house generator and a fishroom one, and the cost would be very high for both. I can't afford it, so I pretend I'm a gambler. But to me, filtration is no issue. It's all heating that matters.

 

[Back in the fold]

I would need a house generator and a fishroom one, and the cost would be very high for both. I can't afford it, so I pretend I'm a gambler. But to me, filtration is no issue. It's all heating that matters.

I’ve heard your story about the ice storm and the power outage . I bet you are gun shy about heating . That would be heartbreaking to lose fish like you did .

 

[GaryE]

I've insulated the room, and confess I did turn the heat off at -10 last winter, to see how fast it fell. It only lost a few degrees over most of a day. I think if I shut the door and didn't go in for the duration, unless it was -30, I'd have about 36 hours before a wipeout. If it's really cold, then 8-10 hours.

It's a risk.

 

[Ram419]

I have battery backup units for aeration/filters. Gas generator if power off for too long. Live in south Texas so temp isn't usually an issue.

 

[Colin_T]

I just got rid of a battery powered pump.

To me, you have a generator, or a dance and some sacrifices to appease the gods. I stock lightly and have fish that tolerate the cool side of the tropics, but in a real disaster, doom and gloom will come.

That's my sort of battery backup

 

[TwoTankAmin]

We have had a whole house back-up generator since about 2008, In fact we are on out second one. We have two buildings- one is the main house and the other a guest house and a storage room. We back-up both as I have tanks in both and my brother lives in the guest house bedroom.

The generator went in when we were caring for my mother who had dementia. I akso had a lot of tanks and some very expensive fish. So we made the decision to do the generator. It was not cheap. It runs on propane. But in 2011 and 2012 hurricanes came up the east coast and we had no power from the utility for 13 days both times. The generator was worth every dollar we paid for it

 

[sharkweek178]

I love my lithium battery pumps. They hold a charge and if it comes to it, I could hook them up to a laptop or portable charger to power them. I run a back up sponge filter in my tanks off them so my tanks never go without filtration or aeration.

 

[Back in the fold]

Worse comes to worst and a guy could go around to all the aquariums and dip a jar and pour it back in . Admittedly a bit of work but how often do these type of disasters happen ?

 

[GaryE]

How often?
Well, 1998 here was the killer. The 8 day icestorm blackout in January. Then a tree fell in July 2006 and cost us 30 hours and cost me a lot of tetras and killies. I had just moved so it was bad timing - everything was adjusting to new water conditions and it was hot. I had a winter blackout in 2015 that killed my cardinals, but the killies, rainbows and Cichlid survived. Here, 24 hours out last year in the autumn. No fish lost.

If there's a nuclear war, only cockroaches and Keith Richards will survive (stolen joke) so that's no worry. If the Mainers invade, they won't want fish. The Chinese hobby is good, so we could work something out. I'm not on a fault line. With climate change, we are getting lots of hurricanes all of a sudden, but at my old house, tornadoes have moved from special effects in the Wizard of Oz to real occurrences, so I'm ahead there. The last 3 hurricanes, the grid has stood up. Ice storms? Big danger. Blizzards? Yup. But the combination of forestry companies and wind means there are fewer trees to fall on the lines.

If I could afford to drop the money on generators with propane, I would. But talking to neighbours, they report no major problems over the past long while. It's a calculation, but a fair one. Under stocking, in aquarium terms, is a big part of it, as is regular water maintenance and a good set up.

I have thought about replacing the pellet stove in the house with wood, which would work with no power. I can't put one in the fishroom though.

 

[Magnum Man]

I understand my stocking level is the biggest issue during power outages... in my newer 10 gallon tanks, they are not "display" tanks, & a pair of fish are not uncommon in them right now... but my "display" tanks are pretty heavily stocked, on purpose, but in those tanks, breeding is not intended... the last of my built in tanks to get set up, will be the 2 - 30 gallon longs, that are built in, under the 2 - 45 gallon tanks... these are harder to work on, but my intention there, is if I have a pair that keeps trying to breed in the display tanks, I could move them to the 30's to breed, after those get set up... but I'm hoping that after I get this last 45 gallon going, I can actually start on setting up my 250 gallon in the living room...

I picked up all the components to run a 1/4 inch water line from a saddle valve on my hard water line, before the whole house softener... this weekend my rainbow, & live bearer tank, will begin getting unsoftened hard water, & when the 1/4 inch line "shut off valves" that I ordered come in, I will have unsoftened hard water I can blend in to the rest of my tanks currently getting straight RO water, not all, will get any hard water, but I could blend water into my shrimp tanks, that are currently getting straight RO

 

[Alice B]

my battery powered air pumps have gotten a reef tank (heavily stocked) Thru a 12 hour outage, and all my freshwaters thru about 48 hours outage before. I have a backup power supply, bought it after snowmageddon, and a wood stove but it is easier to have the fish simply taken care of. For me.