Battery Backup or Generator?

[412Reef]

Hi All,

I was looking to get a battery backup for my aquarium equipment all running through Apex. I was curious what equipment you’d all recommend. I’m sure a gas generator will be purchased in extreme emergencies/long outages, however last night I had about a 2 hour outage and would like something to run critical equipment such as the return pump and heater if this where to occur again. I know there are a lot of options on Amazon.

Thanks!

 

[skidmarkstevie]

I looked into this myself and with a tank of any size, unless youre gonna spend a wad of cash on a big expensive ups or build one you should just get one to run an airstone a few hours to maintain DO. Trying to include everything on ups for less than a few hours wasnt worth it for me. Add any sizeable heater/return pump to a ups and it aint gonna last very long. Plus the stability of the tank is going to survive a couple hours without much of any swing.

Unless of course you're in an uninsulated whistling subfloor house with freezing temps and 3 feet of snow up the wall with no power.

That being said I had a Honda eu3000 that kept my 75 gallon warm during times my house was 30*F inside for sometimes days. This required a tight lid as well. It ran the whole tank including heater & lights, my refrigerator, my guitar amp, and a small personal heater for the ol' dog :).

Imo the generator eliminates the need for ups entirely. I wish it was the other way around, but for my needs it is not.

Following along to see how it works out for you. I couldn't find a ups and hook it up in a slick way that would look good or compare even closely to my generator for the power,size, or usability.

I live in a studio now, with much smaller tank, and much more stable weather and power. If something slick could run say 300-400w for 3-4 hours id consider it.