Dirtdiver

Noob forum member here so a little history.
I have had tanks most of my life except for the last 10 years or so. My last tank was a 125 reef with live rock, bare bottom, Protein skimmer, wet/dry filter, MH lighting, FOWLR. At the same time i tried a freshwater tank and had nothing but problems with it. So anyway life changes and i had to get out of tank's altogether.
Now 10 years later i have a empty 55g tank and want to set one up again.
Naturally i want a SW tank
The problem is once in a while the power will go out for a few hours and with the old way of doing things that would have been a disaster,,But things change and maybe now it would not be so bad but im unsure. This would be a FOWLR setup again but with a sand bottom. My present plan is to go FW but i can see that being a pita from my past experience with it. SW is just so easy i think. So how do sw tank survive with out power for a few hours maybe once a year?
Pat

Tumbleweed

Welcome to fishlore. One the best suggestions that I can think of would be a unineruptible power supply. You can get one at most electronics stores. They are basicaly a battery backup that you put inline between the tank and power outlet. With a large enough one that should keep everything ok during those power outages.

jdhef

Welcome to FishLore. I can't really answer your question, but could you use a UPS (Uniteruptible Power Source) like they use on computers?

Good Luck

Dirtdiver

To run a heater and power head with a ups for 2 hours takes more money then i have for the next two years from what i have researched about them. Has anybody had this happen?
Pat

Oil_Fan

I'm guessing that you're talking around a 200 watt heater for a tank that size. Power heads hardly use any power. From looking that specs of the Koralia, even the highest rated one they have is only 12 watts. So lets say you need to power 210 watts.

The rule of thumb in the computer world is that the total wattage should not exceed 60% of the VA rating of a UPS. So the total equipment connected was 600 watts (not unusual now), then you'd need a 1000 VA UPS.

Now here's the issue. Computers don't use all of the wattage typically. So while the total of everything connected is 600 watts, it maybe only drawing 300 watts. I read one review where it was at that level and tested 2 different 1000 VA UPS', both of them only stayed up for 23 minutes. Even with your total being 210 watts, that would be a true 210. Based on that, you'd be looking at about 32 or 33 minutes minutes before they shutdown.

Now while you can get a 1500 VA UPS from Newegg for a reasonable price (~$150 or so), the 2000 VA ones start at $400. And the 2000 VA would only double the time and only get you just over an hour of run time. Not very good.

Another option would be to have a gas powered generator. Run an extension cord into the house where the tank is and you're good to go. The only problem is that you actually have to be home to switch the power over. A UPS would auto switch over to the battery.

No power to a tank though for a couple of hours really shouldn't be much a problem though. As long you're not talking about a major temperature change, everything should make it through just fine. Now if the outside temps are like below freezing, then you could end up with a problem when the house started cooling down.