SuncrestReef Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 PGE is doing a lot of work in my neighborhood to replace power poles and wires. Today I received a notice in the mail that they will be shutting off the power to my neighborhood next Monday for up to 4 hours, sometime between 8am - 3pm. They can't give an exact time. Monday's weather forecast is for 93 degrees, so I'm concerned that my tank will heat up quickly without the air conditioning working in the house, plus I won't have any flow in the tank once my UPS runs out of backup power after about 20 minutes. I'm pretty new to the hobby, my tank is only 3 months old, so I'm not sure how much to worry about this. Will 4 hours without power be a major risk, or no problem? I have a Reefer XL 425 with only 6 fish, 2 shrimp, 14 corals, 1 anemone, and a cleanup crew. I can turn off the LED lights, UV sterilizer, and refugium pump to conserve power so the UPS might last a little longer, but I still don't think it will run more than 20 - 30 minutes on UPS power. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exodus Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 If using EcoTech get the backup battery to keep the powerheads going to avoid stagnation, freeze some milk jugs full of water or Ice packs, and keep an eye on the temperature, if begins to raise begin to add ice packs as needed to bring it down, and save your UPS for powering a couple basic house fans on the tank. If everything goes well and 4 hours is all things should go fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted July 13, 2018 Author Share Posted July 13, 2018 Unfortunately I have a board meeting on Monday that I can't miss, so I won't be home to monitor the temperature or add a frozen bottle if needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailingeric Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 I think you will be fine temp wise. It takes a lot to heat up water and unless you are living in a tent (which I doubt 😀) your house wont get that warm. If you have AC you could turn it down Sunday night and you could lower the temp on your tank so the water is a little cooler. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewisriverfisherman Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 This makes me nervous, if I was In your shoes i think i would source a generator/air conditioner and have a friend stay over for the day and start the generator and plug in the air conditioner to keep the room cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emerald525 Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 9 hours ago, Sailingeric said: I think you will be fine temp wise. It takes a lot to heat up water and unless you are living in a tent (which I doubt 😀) your house wont get that warm. If you have AC you could turn it down Sunday night and you could lower the temp on your tank so the water is a little cooler. I think you will be fine too. I get periodic timed power outages too. The house usually will stay cool enough if you keep the blinds closed for a 4 hour outage and a tank of that volume will be fine with no flow for 4 hours. My frag tank did just fine when the power was cut off for most of the day. As a precaution you could keep the lights off for the day and toss in an ice pack. Sps has been the only coral I have had that has suffered with heat and this was when I had a way too powerful metal halide combo light over a 30 gallon cube. You have a decent size tank and volume helps with a lot of issues. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Z Reef Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 These are good for backup and keeping the O2 levels up. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted July 14, 2018 Author Share Posted July 14, 2018 Thanks to everyone for your ideas. It's funny, I just ordered a whole-house standby generator last week but it won't be installed for another 8 weeks. In the meantime, I'm planning to rent a portable generator from Home Depot for the day and just start it up before I head out to my meeting on Monday morning. I'll only run my powerheads, return pump, skimmer, and Apex for ATO. I'll turn off the lights and UV sterilizer to help keep the water cooler. I'll also run a fan. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 9 minutes ago, SuncrestReef said: Thanks to everyone for your ideas. It's funny, I just ordered a whole-house standby generator last week but it won't be installed for another 8 weeks. In the meantime, I'm planning to rent a portable generator from Home Depot for the day and just start it up before I head out to my meeting on Monday morning. I'll only run my powerheads, return pump, skimmer, and Apex for ATO. I'll turn off the lights and UV sterilizer to help keep the water cooler. I'll also run a fan. I basically did the very same thing recently for the very same reason - power company replacing a pole on my block. They were super fast - took a little over 2 hours I think but I felt better knowing I had circulation during that time. Didn't have the heat issue but like others have said, I think you should be OK for that period of time, especially if you aren't running lights/UV. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nancymacc Posted July 14, 2018 Share Posted July 14, 2018 When my power is out I only run powerheads on my UPS and use an air line tubing and battery air pump. I don’t worry about return, lights, skimmer. Just flow and oxygen. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spectra Posted July 15, 2018 Share Posted July 15, 2018 Just an FYI it will take a while to get that much water to raise the temp. When I was doing my 100 gallon I had a 40 breeder in my garage as temporary storage and the garage gets hot in the summer.......its over 90 in there in the afternoon. Well all I did was run a simple fan over the top and the temps never went over 80 in the tank. All corals survived and at the time the light was a MH so that even didnt faze it..... Good that you ended up getting a gen for temp power but I think you would have been fine. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted July 17, 2018 Author Share Posted July 17, 2018 I ended up renting a small Honda 2000 generator from Home Depot. Before leaving for my meeting, I connected my Apex EB832 and the other power strip in my Reefer cabinet to the generator. I also added a portable fan to an unused outlet on my EB832 and programmed it to turn on if the water temperature went above 78.5. While at work I was able to check in on Fusion from my phone to keep tabs on everything. The actual outage ended up being less than one hour, and after work I reconnected everything as normal. It all worked out fine. Looking forward to my whole-house standby generator installation in September! Thanks again to everyone who offered advice. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailingeric Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 My wife emailed me today that our thermostat died today. It got up to 84 in our house and my 75 gallon tank only gained a degree. Plus side is I was able to get a Nest which I have wanted for a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjmdh Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 15 minutes ago, Sailingeric said: My wife emailed me today that our thermostat died today. It got up to 84 in our house and my 75 gallon tank only gained a degree. Plus side is I was able to get a Nest which I have wanted for a long time. I miss our Nest. Ours saved us quite a bit of money. Paid for itself in about 4 months. Our new system has a proprietary one wire communication system that isn't compatible with Nest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sailingeric Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 That is good to hear. Trying get the settings straight on it. It shut off for a few minutes thinking we were not home. Will need to turn off those features until the house gets cooled down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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