UPS... For tropical fish?

UTmaniac

UTmaniac

UTmaniac

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I am consdiering the possibility of installing a UPS for my tropical fish setup, so that if we ever experience a power loss, I can at least keep either a 50W filter or 20W aeration powerhead going for a while in emergency situations.

However, I've yet to find anywhere that tells me what these "VA" ratings actually mean. One Ebay site has a 1200VA for ~£80, so does this mean that to I divide the VA rating by the power output of the connected electrical units to find out how many hours the UPS will keep things going?

So for my 50W filter, 1200/50= ~24 hours?

The tank I'm most concerned about is in the garage, which is suppled with electric from a Blagdon Powersafe kit, connected via an RCD into a three-pin socket in the flat. If the RCD trips for whatever reason, I currently get no audio clue (besides a single quiet click) that anything has happened, which could be fatal if I do not go down to the garage until a few hours later.

Any advice would be much appreciated :)
 
VA is about 66% of wattage load.
100VA = 66W

If it says 1200VA on the side, that's about 750W in reality.

There should be a figure for 'Run Time @ Full Load' somewhere in the specifications.
In the case of the APC 1200VA UPS, that would be about 4.5 minutes @ Full Load.

50 goes into 750, 15 times.
4.5 minutes x 15 times = 67.5 minutes of run time.
About an hour for your fishies :)
 
Many thanks for your input, looks like I need to try and locate a cheapish UPS with a rating of ~2000VA and then find the cash to afford this "piece of mind" kit.

Despite being relatively new to the hobby, I have quite a few uncommon fish...
Opsarius pulchellus (think of them as Myanmar's equivalent to the British trout)
Barilius dogarsinghi & canarensis(?) (both Indian varieties of trout-like fish)
Yellowtail Congo Tetra
Lionhead Cichlids
Humphead Glassfish
Panda Garra
Redline Torpedo Barbs
Synodontis brichardi (a catfish from the Zaire river, like the Lionheads, with evolutionary adaptations to high current)
Golden Wonder Killifish
African Butterfly Fish (which hides in the plant that offers a calm spot from the tank current)

I would be devastated to lose them through oxygen suffercation following a power trip...
 
APC's Smart-UPS are pretty well rated :), though I guess you won't need any management / auto-shutdown options! Also on their website is a runtime calculator where you select the wattage in a dropdown menu.
 
Looks like my maths was a fair way short!
It must depend on the size of the batteries involved.

There is a good article here about 'what to do' when there is a power cut.
http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/article/Dealing_With_Power_Cuts/

There seems to be a lot of sound advice around if you google for 'fish tank power cuts' most of them recommend a generator for periods longer than 3 - 4 hours.

Are there no biological oxygen replacement systems?
I appreciate that the mechanical ones are probably the most efficient, but it could make the difference.
 
Looking at the runtime calculator APC kindly sent me the 3000VA Smart-UPS would run for about 8hours 51 with 50W load - but you would be looking at £700+, I would be looking at a cheap UPS and a small generator for longer periods.
 
Besides the serious side of this discussion, i personally think that the title of this thread is one of the funnier ones i've read in a while, I'd go with a portable generator like solution with perhaps an hour long UPS, giving you enough time to react and swap off to the generator.
 
I wonder if you are looking at this the wrong way, if the problem is not knowing when the power trips out, rather than actual power cut would it not be better to have an alarm system that lets you know when the RCD has tripped? You can get ones that plug in the socket and let of a loud sound fairly cheaply or something like this -

http://www.healthandcare.co.uk/care/power-failure-alarm-with-telephone-auto-dialler.html

would call you if the power went out. This would also be useful if you were on holiday for example, it calls you and you get a mate to go round and flick the switch again.
 
That is another aspect of his problem that should be looked at too, especially for the holiday circumstance, but power outages although a rare occurrence will flatten his fish collection if they occur for over an hour without some backup devices to maintain his fishies it seems. So being away and being able to handle long outages should be looked at.
 
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You can get RCD units specifically for fish tanks, so should you have a short power outage/surge as soon as the power is available then it will come back on. I got 3 recently for my marine tank (think they are £10-15 each).
I'm also considering UPS for one of my powerheads.
 
Do you have a link for those? How do they work, do you replace the MCB/RCD in the consumer unit for the house? I could only find ones which plugged into sockets but if RCD in the consumer unit tripped I don't see how those plug in ones would help.

I have a tropical tank too, I tend to just hope nothing trips when I'm away, but only £15 for one is worth doing.
 
Ahh sorry if your consumer unit trips then tough. Its just a plug in one thats like a RCD but the difference is it will turn back on when the supply comes back. I would imagine that the if a surge happens (depending on size) then its more likely that the plug RCD unit would trip rather than the consumer unit.
It was from aquaessentials.co.uk. Dont think they are a competitor unless you can now get overclocked fish - though some of mine do behave like this.
 
lol I could do with overclocking my Siamese algae eater, he is getting lazy in his old age!

Not sure how the ops RCD works so could be an option for him, mine is just a normal house circuit which has only tripped once when a monitor blew, but it's always good to hear about backup options, as at the moment I just cross my fingers.
 
I thought about getting a generator but it just seemed like too much hassle for my very rare use. First you have to get a 'digital' one if you want to power PC's or anything with a chip in it. Apparently the normal generators produce electricity that's too noisy. Maybe a ups could filter this, I don't know. The other reason I decided against it was having to maintain it - oil change, periodic running, etc.

In the end I went with a cheap inverter for the car. Means I always have an engine I know is working properly and can power my stuff for hours, albeit inefficiently with fuel and the various conversions from 12V to 240V back to 12V (charging UPS). At the same time it will charge my UPS' so I don't have to run the car continuously (or I can swap the car battery out and have it charge another).

May or may not be an option for you but thought it was worth a mention.
 
I don't know much about fish, and whether its worthwhile for your collection.

But we have found (& used) SUA750XLI + UXBP24 from APC very successfully for long-term low power draw. They aren't small, but provide a lot of juice. With 50w draw, APC think it'll give you around 54 hrs 39 mins :eek:
Pricing is around £750-800
 
Prioritise.

1. Heating - mandatory, however it's switches on & off as
2. Aeration - you could run this on a timer to pulse, 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off to increase the running time.
3. Lighting - this does not have to be part of UPS.

So your emergency power only needs to do heating and aeration.
 
I would worry about aeration soon as. Heating should be ok depending on time and room temp (and size of tank and if its covered etc).
My tank would take a fair few hours to drop by a couple of degress if room temp was around 20c
 
Thanks for the extra input since I last posted... I know this is rather a bizarre topic for a pc forum, but due to my biggest tank being outside in the garage, its a real worry that if the 3-pin RCD or even the whole flat's electric went down for whatever reason my riverine fish would probably not survive more than 90 minutes before "suffacation" killed them off.

The auto-dialler sounds intresting, but at £133 there is a reasonable possibility I could get an UPS cheaper than that which could keep aeration going for at least several hours, good idea though!

That plug-in RCD looks very similar to the one that came with my Blagdon Powersafe 20m kit, which I managed to get for the "steal" price of ~£95 new on a well known auction site.

Considering I have only been in the hobby for just over six months, I have a fair few unusual fish in the 540l (most are youngsters, hence the large stocking with a Fluval FX5 and Eheim 2078 filters)...
4x Humphead Glassfish (Parambassis pulcinella)
3x Brichard's Catfish (Synodontis brichardi)
2x Lionhead Cichlid (Steatocranus casuarius)
11x Yellowtail Congo Tetra (Alestopetersius caudalis)
3x Panda Garra (Garra flavatra)
3x Indian Red Tail Squirrel Loach (Aborichthys elongatus)
6x Redline Torpedo Barbs (Puntius denisonii)
3x Leopard Bushfish (Ctenopoma acutirostre)
3x Golden Wonder Panchax (Aplocheilus Lineatus)
8x Weather Loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus)
3x Barilius dogarsinghi
4x Barilius bakeri (might be canarensis)

[I have four tanks in total and my second largest tank, a Rio240, only has 13 2cm Lionhead Cichlid fry; their mum; plus two Golden Wonder Killi "hatchlings! Will be using divider soon to move some fish out of 540l and in two months time the fry will be sold/given away]

The UPS is all about keeping the oxygen saturation bearable until I would ordinarily be down in the gagrage "visiting" the fish, which is usually just before work and at least once after work. So unless I install a powerhead to replace the Hydor Magnum 8 (I stopped using it after losing two Humpheads, for fear the 12500 litres per hour was too much for a 540l tank, depspite all being river current appreciating fish), the UPS would be keeping a single filter going, rated at ~50W.

Just in case the power outage was prolonged, a power generator from Machine Mart or alike for ~£90 could be on standby, which on the face of it seems fine for one of the filters.

Problems would arise if the power cut lasted a matter of days, as despite these fish being kept at 22C, the water could easily drop to ~15C or less during the winter in an unheated and uninsulated garage.
 
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The standby generator would power the heater easily. I imagine in that size tank the heater is ~500w. If the power is off for that long you could plug everything into the generator and it should be fine. (on screwfix you can get a 650w generator for 89.99).
Cant you just refil the generator and run it continuously if the power was off for 2 days?

I dont know how clean the supply is coming from the generator so it would be an idea to run the UPS off the generator and then your kit from that as UPS tends to offer surge protection etc.

I think the 550VA 230V UPS on overclockers would keep 50w pump/filter running for 50mins (looking at the APC website). With regards to your heater and the fact the tank is in the garage I would go for two heaters if you havent already - this way if one has a fault you should still be ok.

I'm considering a UPS for mine as we are getting our kitchen done and they will need to turn the power off. Its not an issue if they ring me and its a short period but if they leave it off for a while and I dont know it could prove very costly.
 
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