Emergency situation prep

[TheMachinistReefer]

I havent seen any posts that discusses possible emergency scenarios and how to prepare for them. Please chime in with anything you can think of, or have personally faced with solutions.

1.) POWER OUTAGE
Solutions: battery backup up (UPS), generator, battery powered air stone, or last resort manually moving water (I have a generator)

2.) SEAM FAILURE
solutions: remove water below failure point & transfer all livestock to holding tanks. (I keep minimum 10 gallons of mixed saltwater on hand with multiple 30gal storage totes in my "fish closet") buckets and more buckets. Then a beer.

3.) Equipment failure
Solutions: redundancy.. keep backups of major equipment. Heaters, return pump, possibly lights. Doesn't have to be expensive, just cheap backups to buy time for a proper fix/replacement

 

[Euphyllia97]

Can’t give a general checklist for this one.(as I’m an airline pilot I do love this method). But I would suggest people to have a plan ready in case of overdosing a chemical or accidentally spilling something in the tank.

I have seen a lot of cases where people spill something and have to ask and wait for answers which can be fatal for the tank.

Considerations: If it’s in the sump, consider turning of the return pump to protect the display tank. Big water change? Adding something to balance the chemical? Adding active carbon? Consider getting fish and expensive coral out and in a quarantine?

 

[Kooma]

Careful with UPS units. We were just chatting about them and the floating neutral and ground. A ups and broken heater is still dangerous on battery.

Here’s how I run my tank for redundancy.

Dual 300 watt heaters, linked to Inkbird and controlled by apex

Dual 10,000lph return pumps, running about 35%

3x (soon 4) XR15 lights

3x MP40s (these will be on UPS as no water contact)

I keep a generator (Honda EU3000is) for backing up the house and tanks. We have very infrequent outages (2-3 a year at most) and it’s come in handle more than once.

I keep spare heaters (250 watt) on hand for mixing water and as spares for a bad heater. The Inkbird has a continuous heating alarm that will alarm if a heater fails to work, the tank will take too long to heat based on my settings.

I keep a spare Ehiem 1262 pump that is swappable into my system.

I have a 60 gallon QT system with sump. It has its own return, heaters and lights.

I keep 30 gallons of water mixed at all times. This should probably be more but I’m limited for space.

I have multiple 35 gallon totes for when I buy a system shutdown, which could suffice as emergency storage of fish if a seam let go.

The tank is in the basement and we installed waterproof flooring, spills are easy cleanup and I have spill sensors to setup on the Apex.

The QT system ready to go in short time of needed is my peace of mind, if I were to foul the display or something went horribly wrong I can move all livestock to this system for an unlimited amount of time if needed.