I survived the Hurricane, My fish did not make it.

Okay.

The power went out for 3 days, and my fish died. What killed them, lack of oxygen, build up of toxic waste, or temperature.

It wasn't that hot, so I'm thinking it was one of the other two reasons.

What do others use in case of power outages. A generator is too expensive and is out of the question.

Would a battery powered air pump saved the day? Could one of the computer backup systems work? How long can they drive a pump before running out of juice?

What do you guys do?

 

I myself use two marine batteries and a power inverter to run the main pump in my system and will be installing a battery powered air pump. From the research i have done a UPS sysytem will not provide you long term power for the system you are lookign at 1-3 hours. My marine battery setup worked for 24+ hours with one battery on the main pump. Hope this helps and karma for your loss.

 

Glad you made it, sorry for the tank!

I heard there was a lot of stores down there that lost everything. Especially in the Houston area. The company I work for supplies some of them.

 

I've not done this, but some people use battery powered power heads to keep a flow and help with gas exchange. Sorry for your losses, that really sucks

 

if you lived near me i could probably sell you a generator for cheap, my dad picked up a new hobby of fixing old generators(well fixed 3 anyway). hes was really excited about this old vcu dormatory generator he got its as big as a tractor engine. i bet it could power half the houses on my street

 

I was actually in Tokyo at the time, my wife was home, but didn't care about the fish.
She only cared after I told her how much I really paid for the fish and how much it was going to cost to replace them.

Sean, Do you use a relay to activate the batteries? Does anybody have schematic of how to build a battery back up for the tank?

Lets see a relay on a seperate line, then run the inverter to a strip with the pump. When the power goes out, the relay closes, the inverter then runs into the strip that the pump is in. Could this work? I need an electrical guy to design this.

I live in Texas, so I bet for the next 6 months, generators are going to be a bit expensive.

 

these are inexpensive and automatically kick on when the power kicks off

penn plax silent air b11 - Google Search

 

Sorry for the loss of your fish....glad to hear you and your family are ok!

 

Living in Tornado Alley, we have a 6 hour battery backup system to our tank "electrical exchange" and then we have about 5 of the 110gph battery powered power heads.. While we have not yet figured out what to do with an extended power outage - we have a good start.

sorry for ur loss, and GL on the rebuild!!!

 

Sorry about your loss. In cases like this I think you can help by taking out water with a 5 gallon bucket and adding it back creating aeration. Doing this until the power comes back I think will help. Or just have a generator for basic stuff like pumps etc.. (you dont need a big generator or expensive one)