Power cut insanity

Mik3

Mik3

Mik3

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,266
Location
Andromeda
Well I thought I was prepared for this, damn was I wrong!

It started when I was having a beer at my friends house - about 600M from my house, when all of a sudden all the lights went out, I knew it, it was a power cut, I headed straight home in quite a panic, I got out my 1KW generator to keep my reef tank alive when I noticed I had no extension lead as my sister had took it!, Christ I was in a right panic at this point (no oxygen to tank for 15 mins) I took off on my bike knocking on every one's house I knew, asking them for cable when I remembered I had a 2 lead acid batteries and a inverter for such a situation (breath) My mind was so focused on saving my tank I forgot about my 2nd backup.

Quite ridiculous to react like this when I think about it. All was going through my head was 'save tank', robotic like.

Adrenaline overload after it :/
 
No expensive fish, just 2 years of mature reef tank with corals and over £5000 spent, if it where to crash I would be devastated. I just never realised I would react with such emotion. I would have probably put my life at risk if needed :eek:
 
Mik3 said:
No expensive fish, just 2 years of mature reef tank with corals and over £5000 spent, if it where to crash I would be devastated. I just never realised I would react with such emotion. I would have probably put my life at risk if needed :eek:
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My sisters got a nice tank coming on, just over a year and there tank cost a few grand and thr fish and coral has been building up, its a great centre piece in the house and to lose it would be shocking, my old mates dad was had 2 6 foot tanks in his living room, hes one of the top boffins on fish tank life.
 
No Eels.

I was just trying to express how us Humans can have such a strong, illogical bond with such simple creatures.
 
MikeHunt79 said:
What about a ups for your fishtank? :)
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i had a homemade UPS - batteries and inverter. Non automatic, the circuit would be simple to make. In my panic I forgot about my battery backup. My poor grammar went out the window too :eek:
 
hmmm this is something i've been thinking about lately incase it happens to me and my tank.

how long can tropical fish last without the pump on? we dont have a generator, can you get battery powered pumps, or how do tou make these homemade ups's? :o
 
jonno.co.uk said:
hmmm this is something i've been thinking about lately incase it happens to me and my tank.

how long can tropical fish last without the pump on? we dont have a generator, can you get battery powered pumps? :o
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Its not really a question of how long the fish can last, but how long the bacteria can last without oxygen/nitrite. Without flowing water the bacteria will suffocate and your tank will crash. Its a nightmare situation in a reef tank as the toxins will quickly over come most biological animals, killing them and polluting your tank, taking everything with them.
 
Turning it into a marine thread now, but have you considered a UPS? I've got a 1500VA one that will run the heaters and pumps for a fair amount of time. If you use Tunze Streams as well, they produce loads of flow (6,000 litres) for very little power (11W) and I use at least two powerheads in case one fails.
 
My wife's the same with her tropical tanks. We don't get many power cuts, and those we have had are usually never more than about half-an-hour - but I've seen her wrapping duvets or sleeping bags around her tanks in a desperate attempt to keep the heat in ...
 
come on then lets have some pictures of the fishies that were saved.
I am considering getting a tank but it will be some time before I can spend 5k on one
 
While the fish are great of course, a marine tank has so much more in it than just fish which is why some people don't even bother with fish in their marine tank at all. Here's a few examples of mine:

porites2.jpg

whitecoral.jpg

leather.jpg
 
phykell that's a sexy worm colony :) Nice red mushroom in the background too, gis a frag :D I had some of those mushrooms in the far background also, but they quickly shriveled up and died :( Did you get them from STM?

If your interested I will send you a frag of this bush coral, its over 15' tall now and needs fragging, thats an old image, email me if your interested and I'll post you a frag free :)

 
phykell said:
While the fish are great of course, a marine tank has so much more in it than just fish which is why some people don't even bother with fish in their marine tank at all.

Indeed. There was a paper published by a scientist about reef life - he found over 1 million different species of creatures living on a single rock! There's probably more species on a reef than the entire surface of the planet. you can easy see how they have evolved to exploit every aspect of their environment. You could study their symbiotic relationships for 1000's of years and never come close to understanding how complex it is. Its a fascinating subject.

Oops yeah 15" Bunka.
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