Preparing for the worst after power outage

[Adamantium]

How’s everything doing today, OP? Hoping for the best.

 

[Adamantium]

Agreed my igen 2200 off Amazon ran my old nano and fridge and neighbors fridge for five hours $550~ and Amazon will let most pay it out 87 a mo no financing just spaced withdrawn. get

Nothing against this particular generator, but it’s only rated for 1800 running watts (2200 peak) and I got a Generac 5500 Watt generator for only $50 more from Home Depot. It’s not that quiet, but I have a transfer switch that allows me to power my whole house with it. It’s the freaking best. And you can’t really hear it from inside.

If you don’t have a transfer switch, though, the igen is more than enough to power a tank, and a few other things. Definitely great peace of mind.

 

[nashlake]

I have a small Honda generator that I picked up used a number of years ago. It is quiet, uses little gas and will run the most of the tank. Only had to use it a few times over the years but it has saved my reef several times.
Also works great of tailgating or outdoor gatherings. It runs my heater and pumps, never used for lighting. I was running MH when I got the generator and would need a larger, noisier generator to run the full tank

 

[Cflow]

I’m beginning to feel like the generator is a mandatory piece of equipment. I’ll have to get one for “camping “ . So far a valida frag has almost completely rtn and bc firecracker. I almost picked up a generator from Costco yesterday but I haven’t done enough research on how much power I need. Just a 47 gallon tank.

 

[Adamantium]

I’m beginning to feel like the generator is a mandatory piece of equipment. I’ll have to get one for “camping “ . So far a valida frag has almost completely rtn and bc firecracker. I almost picked up a generator from Costco yesterday but I haven’t done enough research on how much power I need. Just a 47 gallon tank.

If you’re just powering your tank, not much. A 2K watt generator would be more than enough.

 

[Cflow]

If you’re just powering your tank, not much. A 2K watt generator would be more than enough.

That’s what Costco has. It’s $450 I think. Not too bad considering most of these frags these days are over $100 each.

 

[Adamantium]

That’s what Costco has. It’s $450 I think. Not too bad considering most of these frags these days are over $100 each.

Totally worth it. I’d pull the trigger.

 

[Cflow]

So it’s been over a week since the power outage. Three frags rtn. I did my best to adjust the lights but evidently it wasn’t good enough. A few frags are suffering from what looks like burned tips from light exposure. I tipped one acro frag to cut the burned bony part off but I don’t think this was much help. What can I do at this point? Is tipping helpful? I’ve already moved a few to lower light and raised my lights as well. I’ve been testing alk almost daily and it isn’t swinging more than 0.1-0.2 dkh in a day. I guess my question is what to do with frags that have been “burned” from light? For the most part my other corals seem to be doing good with decent PE. They just look very dark because the tank is visibly dim. I’ve also been dosing aminos and phyto feast almost daily to help keep nutrients up a bit. NO3 usually less than 5ppm, PO4 close to 0; finally got it up to 0.05 ppm. Zoas seem to love that phytofeast!

 

[laverda]

BRS did a test of them. They did go for a handful of hours, but not that long. They’re really just designed to give you enough time to let you shutdown your computer during an outage. A dedicated battery backup is better, and generator is best.

The BRS test was very flawed. In the BRS test the pump on the UPSs was running at 100%. The one on the back was running at only 25%. Hardly apples to apples! I know my designated tunze power heads do not put out enough flow to break the surface and oxygenate the water which is critical!
UPSs are not perfect, but can run many hours or days depending on what your running and the size UPS you get. A tesla power wall is just large UPS really.
If you hook up an efficient 12 or 24 volt pump to feed off the battery of a 1500VA ups directly it should last days. Many times longer then the small battery used in the backups sold for aquariums. Some UPSs have 12 DC out puts built in.
The reason a UPS may not perform as well as expected is the have to convert 12Volts DC to 120 Volts AC, then the power supply of the pump convertes it to 12V or 24V. There are losses in both these conversions. An AC pump of the same watage will actually run longer than a DC pump and may be a better choice for you. On my old tank, my 130watt AC pump would run for 6 hours or so on my 1500VA UPS with auxiliary battery pack. The cost of this combo was not much more than the battery's sold for aquarium backup. Mind you I shopped around and got both for less than $200.

 

[Cflow]

I may end up just getting the ecotech battery backup. It’ll actually drive my vectra as well. A heater is out of the question though. If it happens again maybe l I’ll just use my gas stove to warm water and float something with that water in the sump to keep temp up. That sucks but it would’ve been better than nothing.

 

[Cflow]

Update... After a few weeks some of my acros still looked bad and continued to stn. I ended up doing a series of big water changes ~50% and tipped the dead tips off my burned acros. I suppose maybe some toxins were released from the dying corals. They finally seem to be coming back and have healed over the tipped area. Unfortunately my cherry bomb stn to about 1 polyp. I guess 1 is better than none. Maybe it’ll come back.