Battery Backup

Greenstreet.1 · May 18, 2016

AdamPhe said:
back up power is cheap and easy. As long as you don't care about looks. I manage a battery store store where we sell every battery you can imagine. Figure out your watts used per hour. To find the amp hour of run time. I sold a guy a 800 watt inverter and 2 6volt golf cart batteries. He is able to run a full 125 gal reef tank for 10 hours. That's running everything.

How much would this setup cost and what the materials look like ?

Salty1962 · May 18, 2016

Go to the link supplied by @RDFISH and it lists most of the parts you need. Already looked myself.

wcharon · May 18, 2016

AdamPhe said:
back up power is cheap and easy. As long as you don't care about looks. I manage a battery store store where we sell every battery you can imagine. Figure out your watts used per hour. To find the amp hour of run time. I sold a guy a 800 watt inverter and 2 6volt golf cart batteries. He is able to run a full 125 gal reef tank for 10 hours. That's running everything.

Can you provide information on the inverter and batteries???

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

RDFISH said:
I need to supply 12 watts of power for about 8 hours, from my research you need just enough movement to break the service of the water.

Are you sure your load is only 12 watts? If so, this should be fairly easy to supply with an AGM battery and inverter. If you wanted to get fancy, you could get yourself an AC relay and wire it to transfer over to the battery system in the event of a power failure.

On the other hand, if your system load in bigger than 12 watts, there are several options for backup power. What's your budget for this little project?

RDFISH · May 18, 2016

yes each power head is 6 watts.
I ended up going with the air pump listed below.
I have one stone in my tank and another in the sump next to my CerMedia MarinePure Block Bio-Filter Media. The pump plugs into an outlet and when power is cut it will run for 48 hours on D batteries. I tested it last night. I killed the power and had plenty of water bubbles with surface agitation in both my 180 gal tank and 55 gal sump. Total cost was $30.00 for pump, airline , air stones and 4 D batteries. The pump takes two and I have two extra.

Silent Air® B11 Series Battery Operated Aquarium Air Pumps
http://www.amazon.com/Penn-Plax-Sil...&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

RDFISH said:
yes each power head is 6 watts.
I ended up going with the air pump listed below.
I have one stone in my tank and another in the sump next to my CerMedia MarinePure Block Bio-Filter Media. The pump plugs into an outlet and when power is cut it will run for 48 hours on D batteries. I tested it last night. I killed the power and had plenty of water bubbles with surface agitation in both my 180 gal tank and 55 gal sump. Total cost was $30.00 for pump, airline , air stones and 4 D batteries. The pump takes two and I have two extra.

Silent Air® B11 Series Battery Operated Aquarium Air Pumps
http://www.amazon.com/Penn-Plax-Sil...&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

Make sure you inspect the diaphragm in that little pump every so often, or, even better, actually run it. The rubber diaphragm is known to dry rot or crack over time.

AdamPhe · May 18, 2016

Your looking between $200 to $300

Greenstreet.1 · May 18, 2016

Ok will look in a few and put something together

renato120 · May 18, 2016

Im Looking for an automatic back up battery, that will starts automatically if Im not home. Do they even sell one like that? Im searching but none says if does or not.

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

renato120 said:
Im Looking for an automatic back up battery, that will starts automatically if Im not home. Do they even sell one like that? Im searching but none says if does or not.

That's how a UPS works. The battery takes over when the power drops out.

renato120 · May 18, 2016

AllSignsPointToFIsh said:
That's how a UPS works. The battery takes over when the power drops out.

Cool! Do you know a good one? Thanks

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

The Cyberpower or APC 1500VA systems would both work well.

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

The very first post in this thread has a link to the Cyberpower system.

renato120 · May 18, 2016

What about this?

AllSignsPointToFish · May 18, 2016

should work fine. What do you want to run with it?

Rybren · May 18, 2016

Untamedrose said:
You plug that into the wall, it powers an air bubbler All the time...if the wall power stops it keeps going on the batteries.

Not quite. It does plug into the wall, but only turns on when it detects a power loss. Otherwise it just sits there.

There is a switch on the side that, IIRC, will allow you turn on the pump regardless of the AC power state. I don't use it as the pump is fairly loud and I don't need/want the constant bubbles. In the ~7 years that I've had the pump, it has been called into service many times (too many to count) for durations of up to 6 hours. I'm only on my second set of batteries.

shoelaceike · May 18, 2016

pdt7361 said:
I use an APC 1500VA with the external battery bank connected - can get me a couple of days before needing to worry about powering on a generator. For the battery backup plus the additional bank of batteries, they currently run a little over $300.

Have you ever tested it? What are you running on it?