Urgent help needed power failure and panicking!
- Thread starter Clownfish9906
- Start date
Ellies in Booysens sell decent UPS systems. Got mine there. The generator is more for the tv etc come winter. But also a nice backup of my backup 
Its a generator
I will get as many minutes as I have petrol
I see.... How quickly does it run through a tank?
Any ideas as to where I can source a deep cycle battery at a decent price? Need a 40AH..
Still need to put oil and petrol in this badboy. Its a 12L tank. On the box it stated 12hours running time at max wattage. Sounds decent enough.
Clownfish9906,
The guys are right. For Peace of Mind, see if you could get some backup equipments asap. It seems the Midrand area has unreliable Power Supply. Its the second time in about 3 weeks Midrand has a very long Power failure. They should give you guys discount on your account!
Goodluck there!!!! I'm sure were all gonna go through that sickening feeling of a power failure this winter!
This is just the invertor...so I would still need to buy batteries...
Just a question, if I add up the watts consumed, I get around to 120w + maybe a 100w heater as a backup unit. Would a 300w invertor with deep cycle battery do the trick?
BushPower - Products
BushPower - Products
Another idea is to have low powered wavemakers in the DT and a small powerhead in the DSB - just to create flow. Maybe add a 50w heater and I will be well under the 100w mark and thereby extend the life of the battery during the power outage...?
I have only my return pump and a 100w connected to my UPS - peace of mind
Not a clue dude.
I normally overdo all the stuff I do by going way bigger than what I really need.
If you need something that will just handle your system you will need to ask one of the outdoor guys.
hey Riaan
Sorry - did you read what the livestock consisted of?
The tank has been cycling without livestock - not for very long that is. I used live rock - not the ones being cured, etc. with proper dead rock - also nothing dying and causing amonia spikes. I used stones from Dallas to help seed my DSB as i could not get seeded sand after asking for assistance on MASA. I have been dosing with Stability from day one - as per the dosing formula. My skimmer has run from day 1 - albeit its noisy and hardly any skimmate was being produced.
I did the nitrate test on Monday and got to 0.1 - did the test at Idol and was assisted by Louie. I went down to the coast on the weekend and return with stock for my tank. Some didnt make it and it became apparent that I had to get them into the tank asap...they either would die in the bucket or my tank - with the tank, they stood a chance of survival...
Well, it is now day 4 and the livestock are doing just fine...no deaths to report off! Added some caulerpa and cheato curteousy of Helga (THANKS HELGA!)
I found that a 600W inverter is a nice middle ground. Its enough to run a small tank and one day when you go bigger it will be enough to run the essential stuff on a big tank.
One very important thing to look for in an inverter is a built in AC transfer switch. If you dont have one then you have to set it up the unit everytime you have a power failure. All the cheaper ones dont have this which means you cant run them like a UPS without some clever electrical wiring and usage of different relays.
One very important thing to look for in an inverter is a built in AC transfer switch. If you dont have one then you have to set it up the unit everytime you have a power failure. All the cheaper ones dont have this which means you cant run them like a UPS without some clever electrical wiring and usage of different relays.
I have also experienced this problem with power outages and eventually bought an inverter and a battery. I am running a cannister filter unlike most on here who have sumps and have that alone connected to the battery. I once had my power head and skimmer attached to it as well but the battery died after an hour
This brings me to my recent holiday in Zanzibar where the tide draws back for over 2 - 3 hours at a time and then comes rushing back in. My point being that after the sea had pulled back it left numerous rock pools over a distance of almost a kilometer. In these rock pools numerous tiny fish and corals were left stranded with no waterflow and high tempretures to deal with.
So logic says that whatever is in your tank has experienced being caught in a rock pool before in the wild right? So the question is how much of an effect does a power outage of 1 - 5 hours have on your tank if this is a natural cycle in the ocean ?
Reminds me that I still need to post a few pics of the corals we saw in Zanazibar
This brings me to my recent holiday in Zanzibar where the tide draws back for over 2 - 3 hours at a time and then comes rushing back in. My point being that after the sea had pulled back it left numerous rock pools over a distance of almost a kilometer. In these rock pools numerous tiny fish and corals were left stranded with no waterflow and high tempretures to deal with.
So logic says that whatever is in your tank has experienced being caught in a rock pool before in the wild right? So the question is how much of an effect does a power outage of 1 - 5 hours have on your tank if this is a natural cycle in the ocean ?
Reminds me that I still need to post a few pics of the corals we saw in Zanazibar
man threads like this make me see red on so many levels. just to save viper from hitting me with a ban for saying what i realy feel i'll keep quiet.
but before i go hug a tree, why dont you start planning and keeping livestock with a degree of sustainability and ethics. If youve just moved to South Africa then perhaps you wont have known that the electrical supply is poor tro darn right unreliable, but if you live there you dont even have the excuse of ignorance. IF you have a tank get back up power! its been going on for years and it will continue to go of for years.
the fact that its a stocked tank thats less than 2 weeks old, has fish in it that are wild caught without any form of quarenteen and that you live tioo far from the source of the things you remove from the ocean to actually get them home alive, all because you dont want to support an LFS in you area that has things in place to ensure the survival of the things we remove from their natural habitat.
there are ethics and morals involved in looking after living things. be it fish or animal husbandry and you as a guardian of those living things have a responcibility to have in place an environment that at least gives them a chance of living on a sustainable basis. Think about the way you keep your tank, the equipment you have (or still need) and how you go about creating your aquarium.
No one wants to hear what I am saying, and fewer even have the guts to say it, but at the end of it all its a 'tough love' approach whereby the truth hurts yet is still unavoidable.
mods feel free to delete, i wont be on here for awhile anyway, id rather go look after my lambs!
but before i go hug a tree, why dont you start planning and keeping livestock with a degree of sustainability and ethics. If youve just moved to South Africa then perhaps you wont have known that the electrical supply is poor tro darn right unreliable, but if you live there you dont even have the excuse of ignorance. IF you have a tank get back up power! its been going on for years and it will continue to go of for years.
the fact that its a stocked tank thats less than 2 weeks old, has fish in it that are wild caught without any form of quarenteen and that you live tioo far from the source of the things you remove from the ocean to actually get them home alive, all because you dont want to support an LFS in you area that has things in place to ensure the survival of the things we remove from their natural habitat.
there are ethics and morals involved in looking after living things. be it fish or animal husbandry and you as a guardian of those living things have a responcibility to have in place an environment that at least gives them a chance of living on a sustainable basis. Think about the way you keep your tank, the equipment you have (or still need) and how you go about creating your aquarium.
No one wants to hear what I am saying, and fewer even have the guts to say it, but at the end of it all its a 'tough love' approach whereby the truth hurts yet is still unavoidable.
mods feel free to delete, i wont be on here for awhile anyway, id rather go look after my lambs!
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Not all stock come out of rockpools unless you actually go and catch your own. Most of our stock come from reefs in open ocean.
And the rockpool water volume to number of life in it ratio is much lower in nature than in our tanks.
I would still like to see a rockpool with 30 fish in it and stocked fully with corals.
@Clownfish9906 - Don't worry dude.
I did the same when I started the hobby a couple of years ago.
Cycled my tank with a couple of blue damsels as the urge to get something in the tank was too great and looking at rocks in water for the proposed 6 week period was just kinda dull.
I know there are products on the market now-a-days that will allow you to cycle a tank in a matter of days (do a google on it), so the standard 6 to 8 week cycling period is now old school but still preferred by many people.
However @crispin has lots of valid points that should be taken into consideration when starting up a marine tank.
Most of the filtration and equipment that comes with standard shop bought pre-packaged tanks is not adequate for what is actually needed.
All I can say is google is your friend, do loads of research on this hobby as the more you know the better off you and your stock are in the long run.
I learnt from my mistakes, some costly on getting cheap equipment but mostly due to lack on knowledge on the subject at the time...
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did you test the ammonia levels?
Remember, Mother Nature do not have a turbo charge mode. Sorry, there are one such mode, and that is when things starts dying. And they keep on dying. Obviously you brought the fish up without an air pump. else you would have used it on your tank last night. OK, I will stop being negative.
For short power failures, all you need is one pump circulating, pointed at the surface. No need to run skimmer, lights, heaters, multiple reactors etc... For longer breaks, you cannot run these equipment on batteries either. The batteries will die quickly, unless you got 2 or 4 deep cycle 105mH batteries. Then a generator is better. will last as long as the tank got petrol, and you can refill that.
The one thing thats nice about a UPS is the fact that its always on. So when you are at work, u dont have to worry about starting up a generator...