power off

[clark4feathers]

I wake up this morning and notice my GFI tripped off (not sure why) was off for a while. Tank looked bad. I have had this tank up and running for a month with no problems. Now I get a clown fish and I run into this problem. I can only hope it will be ok. Is it worth investing in a power back up? I have seen them however do they work? is it worth the investment? for what ever reason my timer, when I switch it to timer on or off it trips my GFI....not sure why. Now I need to be a electrician too? I can only hope my clown will be ok...

 

[austinsdad]

Check for ammonia or nitrites to see if there any die off in the rocks or something you can't see. Also a good time to prepare for a water change.

Hard to say on your power back up for something so small. Wondering if a UPS designed for a computer would work. Those techies would have to weigh in on that one. Not me. What kinda power back up didja have in mind anyway?

 

[Zer0]

A UPS would be a pretty good investment if you have power outages every so often, and ones that don't last very long.. a day or two at most. And even then, you would only want to run the most essential things on the UPS, like the heater, filter, and the lights if you have coral. You need to decide which components your tank can't live without.

In my case, for example, i would run the heater, and the return pump. Assuming i only had a power outage for a day or so. Corals can still survive without lights for a few days, and if your tank is near a window, you could open up the window completely to let them still get light.

 

[clark4feathers]

I was thinking just to power a air stone...I do not have power outages regularly. However today my GFI turned off, which in turned turned everything off. When I play with the time my lights are plugged into the GFI goes whacky and I have to reset it.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

If your GFIC is tripping off every time you throw the switch on the timer, then either (1) something is wrong with your timer, or (2) something is wrong with that particular circuit in your house wiring. Obviously trying a new/different timer is the cheapest option at this point!

{Edit: Guess there's an option (3) too... that the GFCI is bad.}

 

[clark4feathers]

what is the best course with a power outage? Do people use back ups? If so what do they use?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I run a Xantrex Powersource 400 battery backup on my tank. It's a great unit, but unfortunately they don't make it anymore. It'll run a heater for about an hour, at most, but will run the low wattage stuff on the tank for several hours. Most consumer-grade computer UPS units don't have enough power stored to run stuff for very long. Don't even think about running heaters on them (or lighting for that matter), but they *will* power pumps and powerheads to give you some aeration for a limited amount of time. If you wrap the tank in blankets, it'll stay warm for quite a while all by itself.

My main power backup though is a Honda generator. The battery backup just keeps things going during those short outages, or gives me some breathing room before I have to decide to drag out the generator and hook it up.

You really do need to figure out though what is wrong with the circuit. If your GFCI is tripping for no apparent reason, having a battery backup doesn't solve that problem. In fact... here's a scenario that is kind of scary: you have a short somewhere in the system and just as you're getting shocked, your GFCI does its job and shuts things down. But then... your UPS senses a power outage and kicks in, sending power back to whatever was shorting (and shocking YOU) in the first place. And now since the power is coming from the UPS and not your house wiring, you have nothing to protect you except for the built in circuit breaker in the UPS. For that reason, I always run a GFCI on the output side of my UPS.

 

[mr_X]

i use a portable generator as well, to power my system and my fridge and anything else i want to use, like lights, a portable a/c unit or heater, and of course my pc.
we have power outages here that some time last 24 hours or more.

they do sell battery powered air pumps that go on automatically when the power fails-
Battery Operated Air Pumps for Aquariums

 

[clark4feathers]

I figured out. Plugged the timer into a extention cord. Not a good idea, obviously. Plugged directly into GFI. It is working ok now Live and learn

 

[mr_X]

i don't think an extension cord is the problem.

 

[clark4feathers]

I have flipped off and on in the AM with no problems so far now that it is plugged into the socket...the timer is not tripping the GFI like before

 

[mr_X]

maybe that extension cord in particular has a problem, but i've used timers on cords on multiple occasions and didn't have any issue.

 

[clark4feathers]

I did not think of that....do you use a regular extension card or a heavy duty one?

 

[IT-FishGuy]

Power

You should be able to use a UPS to run stuff. Just look at the ratings of your equipment and then look at the rating of the UPS. Say your stuff draws 5-6 amps. If the UPS is rated to support say 50 amps/hour then you'll have roughly 10 hours. Or something to that effect.

 

[clark4feathers]

UPS?

 

[IT-FishGuy]

Uninterrupted Power Supply. Think car battery in a nice white case. We use them in IT to keep the servers going after a power outage, so we can shut them down properly and not lose the world.

 

[mr_X]

I did not think of that....do you use a regular extension card or a heavy duty one?

i've used multiple cords in different applications. in my old apartment, i had all sorts of things running off of a single run-of-the-mill orange cord...like this-