Air backup system incase of power failure

[MMestrada]

Hello all,

I hope this finds you well. I have this posted in anothet locatin too, but it does not look like its getting any views.

Recently, I went out of town for an extended period of time. During that period my power went out and stoped all my filters and pumps.

Out of the 3 tanks I have set up, 2 of them came back online. Sadly, 1 tank never came back up and sat stagnate for 3 days before I could return.
I ended up only loosing 1 fish, but 1 is still to many for something I could have potentially midigated.

The idea I have been toying with is a solilinoid actuated backup system specifically for the delivery of o2 to agitate the tanks surface.

What I have come up with thus far is a using a 1 gallon potriable compressor tank (the ones without an attached compressor) that is plumed into the tank with an air stone. If the power ever went out, the solinoid would open and allow air to flow into the tank and agitate the surface of the water.

The pluming would obviouly include an inline air filter and a PSI regulator, as well as the O2 having been filtered and dried out before being compressed.

The advantages of this system are that is consumes no electricty once activated. It would only be a redundant system incase of power failure and it would activate automatically without my intervention.

To prevent the issue of rust contamination, I would be using a conposite or aluminum tank, not a steel one.

If I am not mistaken in my line of thinking, a system such as this can be scalled up, or down, depending on the tank size and desired run time.

I understand there are numerous batery and UPS systems on the market that would allow me to acomplish the same task with using an off the shelf air pump, but I have yet to find a system that fits exactly what I want/need it to do.

I also understand that like a UPS backup, it will only last for a short amout of time (depending on PSI in the tank).

Is a system like this even possible? Has anyone ever experimented with this type of concept?

Any input would be great! Thanks


Btw, all my tanks are curently freahwater only. I have yet to dabble in saltwater aquatics.

[Andy Sager]

Sounds like an interesting concept. To be honest tho, I've not seen one like this in action. If no one here has ether, you may want to contact a local college that has a marine sciences dept. They may have a more up to date schematic that will help.

Hope this helps

[MMestrada]

Originally Posted by Andy Sager

Sounds like an interesting concept. To be honest tho, I've not seen one like this in action. If no one here has ether, you may want to contact a local college that has a marine sciences dept. They may have a more up to date schematic that will help.

Hope this helps

So I took your advise and reached out to some marine biologists, none of them seem interisted in helping me inveatigate this idea. Back to square one.

I guess I could risk it and build the system anyway, but if someting goes wrong I might loose my livestock. Its obviously not ideal, but I guess thats part of the cost of experimenting with bew ideas. I will keep you updated on the progress and implementation of the system.

[Andy Sager]

Originally Posted by MMestrada

So I took your advise and reached out to some marine biologists, none of them seem interisted in helping me inveatigate this idea. Back to square one.

I guess I could risk it and build the system anyway, but if someting goes wrong I might loose my livestock. Its obviously not ideal, but I guess thats part of the cost of experimenting with bew ideas. I will keep you updated on the progress and implementation of the system.

Hmmm, sorry to hear. Maybe try ones that have any kind of electrical engineering studies. Somebody somewhere has to have some kind of idea on how to do this.