Power supply issue for fresh and salt water tanks

Disclaimer - I am posting this question for my wife who is fish tank smart
and computer stupid. I am fairly clueless when it comes to fish tanks. Also,
while my question is regarding both fresh and salt and this group is aimed
primarily at only fresh, I felt that the question was generic enough that I
could post it here. I apologize if I am mistaken.

My wife has a 30-gallon freshwater tank with live plants and an 80-gallon
sal****er tank, non-reef. Both tanks healthy (so she tells me).

Anyway, not to bore anyone, during the summer months we have monsoon storms
that have a nasty tendency to knock out the power. The freshwater has
handled this OK in the past, but she is concerned about the sal****er tank
(which is new) and, although it has handled it OK in the past, she does
stress about the freshwater tank.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding a backup power supply for these
tanks for those times when the power goes off?

My wife has already suggested a generator, but I am not putting a generator
in the middle of the living room, not very feng shui :-) I am looking for
something that can be hidden in the cabinet or something along those lines.

If you can help you can reach me here or e-mail me directly at
.

Thank-you all.

On May 31, 6:41 am, wrote:
Disclaimer - I am posting this question for my wife who is fish tank smart
and computer stupid. I am fairly clueless when it comes to fish tanks. Also,
while my question is regarding both fresh and salt and this group is aimed
primarily at only fresh, I felt that the question was generic enough that I
could post it here. I apologize if I am mistaken.

My wife has a 30-gallon freshwater tank with live plants and an 80-gallon
sal****er tank, non-reef. Both tanks healthy (so she tells me).

Anyway, not to bore anyone, during the summer months we have monsoon storms
that have a nasty tendency to knock out the power. The freshwater has
handled this OK in the past, but she is concerned about the sal****er tank
(which is new) and, although it has handled it OK in the past, she does
stress about the freshwater tank.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding a backup power supply for these
tanks for those times when the power goes off?

My wife has already suggested a generator, but I am not putting a generator
in the middle of the living room, not very feng shui :-) I am looking for
something that can be hidden in the cabinet or something along those lines.

If you can help you can reach me here or e-mail me directly at
.

Thank-you all.

There are few options options you can use.

*Azoo makes a heavy duty air pump (runs several devices) that runs on
normal 120 V AC, then switches to a built in battery when power fails
for 9- 12 hours.

* I personally used a few inverters, each contected to deep cycle 12 V
batteries to run our aquariums and electronics in our LFS in LA during
the many rolling black outs we had a few years back. A 400 Watt
modified sine wave or pure sine inverter works well.

* You can purchase a relay (from an electronics store such as Radio
Shack) that you place in your contol line for your Inverter that
closes (making a circuit) when power fails thus automatically swithing
on battery power

* There are also cheap little 'D' battery pumps that can run one small
air pumps

Carl
http://aquarium-info.blogspot.com/

wrote:

Anyway, not to bore anyone, during the summer months we have monsoon storms
that have a nasty tendency to knock out the power. The freshwater has
handled this OK in the past, but she is concerned about the sal****er tank
(which is new) and, although it has handled it OK in the past, she does
stress about the freshwater tank.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding a backup power supply for these
tanks for those times when the power goes off?


You might consider a UPS if your power outages are fairly short. Most of the
small ones die after an hour or so, but s larger one might work longer -
you'd have to do some research.

--
It's turtles, all the way down

Thank you both for the suggestions and I will pass them along to the mrs.

We had considered a UPS as I have them on my computers, but we were having
trouble locating one the would suit her needs (could be we were looking in
the wrong place).

I checked out the Azoo and that may be the solution. She'll have to look at
it, though.

Thank-you both!!!!!