Michigan Cichlid Association
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: HMD on November 21, 2015, 11:48:45 AM
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Ok what to do????? Yesterday I lost power for about 12 hours have 1100 gallons of tanks all with sponge filters and power filters plus heaters. All seem to be ok temp went down to about 76 in some of the tanks. What do all you multi tank guys do when this happens?
HMD (Dennis)
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I have a generator just for my tanks.
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I have a generator that I run the whole house on, including the AC in the summer.
It's just a regular gasoline style but I wired it to my panel so I don't have to run extension cords when the power goes out.
It's set up similar to a natural gas automatic system but without the added expense. The downfall is that you have to be home when the power goes out to manually switch the power supply and, of course, start the generator and keep the tank filled.
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As long as your house doesn't get too cold, and your tanks aren't heavily stocked, you should be okay for a short time.
Keep your tanks covered as much as possible to conserve heat, if it's a long time, you can swish the water around at the top occasionally to break the surface tension of the water and diffuse air into the water.
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Here on the Royal Oak grid I am on we lose power on average about 3 times per year, so I bought a 3500w generator about 2 years ago just for my tanks. You can get one for about $300 new at Lowes / HD and it'll be large enough to run a good number of tanks off and you can always alternate tanks every few hours if you have a lot of tanks. IMO it was the best $300 I ever spent in the fish hobby. Nothing worse than sitting worrying that all your fish are gonna start dying or getting ill waiting for power/heat to come back on.
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I have a 9800w Rigid, I have a 220 pannel in the garage I can plug it in and backfeed the whole house.
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I have a 9800w Rigid, I have a 220 pannel in the garage I can plug it in and backfeed the whole house.
In general terms that's what I did with my panel.
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I lived through that experience. Mine lasted a week. But 5 buckets of fish didn't. I hope to have that rendered soon this year and never experience that again. But if you go the generator route, make sure you have the right extension cords that can handle the voltage. I used what I could find and had some melt......a scary thing to have happen.
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Thanks for all the comments. I am going to bite the bullet and get a whole house generator. I am not going to experience this again. Which means my fish wish list will be on hold for a while.
HMD (Dennis)