power outage

with winter comming on has anyone thought what you would do if you lost power to your home.temp. in your tank falling . i thought about sence i have a gas stove was heating water and doing water changes and trying to keep the temp. untill the power came back on. but what if it last days.i would run out of salt. then i was thinking i would fill water bottles up and heat them in a pan of water then put them in my tanks. i sure would be in panic mode till i found how many i would need and how often i needed to change them. i think i would be very buzy untill it was over. hears the qustion, what would you do??????

 

I have APC battery backups on my tanks... What I would do is unplug un necessary lights and powerheads from it in order to save battery juice and hope for the best!

 

I need a backup for when I'm out of town .. which is every week.
When I'm home I have an AC plug in my SUV that I can run everything... If I'm home.

 

How big is the back-up unit and how long can you run your tank on it? I just set up a tank 2 months ago and was wondering the same thing . . .

 

I haven't ever had to run either tank off it so I can't answer that. Just google APC battery backups, I suppose if you figure your tank's usage based on backup specs you could get a general idea.

Oh yeah, getinpora, "with winter coming" makes me laugh, you're an hour south of me, I don't know about you but we have a winter storm warning today!

 

we have propane heaters i would probably have one pointing at my tank from a distance to keep it warm
(just need a tank to worry about now lol....)

 

were getting it thats what made me think about it again ive been lucky for alot of years ive had short ones in the summer but never in the winter

 

Hi get, if you can afford it, a 5500 generator with the 5 outlet pig tail is all you need. If you want to spend more....I had an electrician (good to have a friend that's one) put in a separate breaker box in the basement and ran the line with a male end out to the garage. All I do if power goes out is fire up the generator, plug into the generator and plug the other end into the garage outlet, flip the lever from the main to the generator box and I have power for the whole house. Generator was about $800.00 and circuit box and wire job was about $600.00

 

I did the same thing. I dont know about all of you but I agree that this hobby is allot of money and I can say that is about the smae price some of us spend on lighting or protien skimmer. So to me it was an important part of my reef system. Home depot sells some 3500 watt for something like 400ish. Then if you are crafty you can just run an extension cord into the room your tank is in if you had to, rather then having the electrican come by and wire it in. Just my .02

 

I have a 5500 watt gen that I fire up. living in southen illinois there are a ton of power outages. Ice storms frequently knock power out to people down here for 2 weeks at a time. Luckly I have only lost power for 2 days at one time and run my gen in spirts not to suck up too much gas. I figure 8 hours max down time ( just enough time for a quick nap) then i fire it back up. Heat usualy stays about the same cause we also have a fire place in the house.