[AquaticLife] AHA - The Duckweed Light Came On!
Or better yet… get a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply)… the kind used for computers. It will condition the power so your filter pump doesn’t feel the spikes, dips and surges but it will also run your filter for an hour or so in the event of a power outage. A small 500-750mW UPS can be found on sale for $30-40. The APC brand that I had/have were designed to run a computer system for 15-30 minutes during a power outage. You should also have one of these for each computer system. I even have one on my entertainment center so I don’t have to reset all the clocks, etc. on my TV, VCR’s, etc., each time there is a power surge/outage.
UPS helped save my fish tanks during post-Katrina times down here when I went 14 days with no power. Of course, they didn’t last the entire 14 days but I would recharge the UPS every night or so on my friends car inverter (I now have my own). Then during the next day, I’d run the filters for a minute or two every hour or if I didn’t have UPS power, I’d manually pour water through the filters so that the filters wouldn’t become stagnant and it would keep some of the N-bacteria alive.
I recently picked up two HUGE UPS’ (2,000mW) for free on Craigslist and the replacement batteries (two 6-volt in series) would have cost over $100.00 so I bought two small $29.00 12-volt car batteries and hooked one up inside each unit and they work fine and seem like they should last for several hours compared to my much smaller UPS’ that ran the filters for an hour during a power outage. I need to test one of them soon before hurricane season kicks in full time, just to see how much time I have on these new UPS’.
Lenny Vasbinder Fish Blog - http://GoldLenny.blogspot.com
Category: Philippines Internet Koi Society
