preparing for hurricane season....

[Guest]

Some ideas I have for prepping for hurricanes here in FL


Battery powered air pumps....I can keep sponge filters running on these

an extra 10 gallon tank, ready for plants...I put this on my porch. It will get hot, and algae, but it will also get sunlight if the power is out for a long time. Hopefully it will be enough to keep plants alive.

Frozen cubes of tank water to control temperature

Anything else I might need? Thoughts/Ideas?

 

[JeffreyL]

hurricane

It is a much bigger investment, but a gas powered generator. That way you can, depending on size, keep a few essential items in the house powered up. But then, living in Fl, you likely already know that.

On a similar note, I was looking out a window at the back of the house when a micro burst swept thru. Watched 2 large branches come down, heard dozens of pine cones bouncing on the roof, and now have litteraly an inch of pine needles on the deck. LOL Ah, well. Get an older home with lots of trees................ LOL

Good luck this year, may all your storms be frail and anemic!!!!!

 

[IceH2O]

I would see if there is a place in the shade you could put the 10 gallon tank. I don't think we even put close to the wpg that full sun would be on a tank. The indirect light should be enough for the plants and keep the tank cooler than full sun.
My 1700 gallon pool is in full sun and recently with the high heat was sitting at 92 degrees. I'd imagine a 10 gallon would have registered a lot higher.

 

[joannde]

UGH, the dreaded words - hurricane season. I was watching the news and one of the "tips" was to buy a couple of cans of spraypaint so that you could paint your house number and insurance company name on the street (they didn't say "in front of your demolished house" but it was implied) - its the downside of living in paradise I guess LOL

I'm going to grab a couple of battery powered air pumps. We have a gas powered generator but I would have to use that for more essential items - like the fridge. I'll chuck a few pop bottles or rubbermaid containers filled with water in the freezer. If I don't need them for food I can use them for the tank - good thinking FishyPeanut.

 

[Ferret_Friend]

I never would have thought of that spraypaint thing, but it makes a load of sense.

 

[Thebluyak]

but why would you paint it on thr street though? Who else needs to know it besides you?

 

[fish_4_all]

You spray paint the address and insurance company AFTER the house is destroyed from a hurricane and so the insurance company can do their damage assessments.

I have seen a couple things around that would help also. One is a pnuematic pump used to pressurize an air tank for feeding your tanks with air. It is run by getting on a stationary bike and simply bedaling away. The other is a mini solar panel, suprisingly it was under $50 and could be used to run 4 standard household lights so it should run an air pump easily. Nothing on being used for cooling though but I would guess it could be used for it. I will see if I can find them again.

 

[odessadude]

Here is my set-up I run when the power goes out. I tested it for two weeks and it was still running the pumps.

I set the charger at 14vdc and my inverter shuts down at 9.5vdc. Seems to be pretty effective for bio-wheels and air pumps.

The batteries are 2 X 8D's at 1600cca each. The inverter is a 400 watt with a 6 amp charger. I run the system in parallel. The amp draw is minimal and like I said, it works for me.

 

[Blazeherd2306]

All I use is battery operated air pumps from Walmart for $6 each. No fish deaths so far.

 

[odessadude]

So have you figured out how many batteries it would take to run those air pumps for a week or two?

I also run lights off of these batteries I posted the picture of. The 18 watt compact florescent lasts a long time on a single car battery and a really long time with 8d's..

 

[Blazeherd2306]

I haven't had any batteries die on them yet and that is with probably 60 hours total of power outages.

 

[joannde]

I use them for my shrimp (bait) when I go fishing. I've found they're good for about 80 hrs or so in general.

 

[Guest]

I cannot even sympathize what you all go through because in Massachusetts we usually dont have any drastic storms.

However, from reading others posts from previous years isn't the biggest problem with the loss of fish the heat? What if you have to leave? I would think that a chiller, maybe a DIY would be a big plus.

 

[Guest]

I lost power here for 2 1/2 week do to a transforumer going out at the power station, I used a 3 set of double D battries for that whole time. At the time I only had 10 tanks and would use it for 2hr pertank. When the tempature strated getting up there I would tank a batter operrated fan {Wal-mart $9.59 four D batteries} I would place it over the tanks using a 2x4 to set t on . let it blow over the surface of the water. it not only droped the tempature of the water to a safe level. The air blowing over the water would help to blow cooler air in the rooms.
Now it's no central air [LOL] but anything that keeps the room and tank water lower then 81 degress is a hugh plus. Even blowing on the conner of the tank it droped the temp of the tank. In the evenng I'd turn it off. But on two sets of 4 double D batteries it ran for 16 days and the air pump ran 24/7 on a 3 set of battiers. Now you don't have to run the air in the tank for ever in the tank. After about 45mins there should be enough air in the tank for the fish for at least 5hrs or so. 23 fish in a 55gal tank isn't going to use all the air in the water in any faster then that and even blowing the fan over the top of the water making the water move is going to place air in the water as well right?

 

[Thebluyak]

yeah it should create the gas exchange when the water is blown around