obrien.david.j Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Hope everyone out there woke up safe and sound. Yesterday was not Snow-Mageddon, it was Tree-Down-Mageddon! Six trees down just beyond our fence, into our neghbors heard. (watched #6 fall) Four trees down onto a different neighbors roof, still visible from our back yard. And most impactful... We lost power. Our power was out 2:30pm Sat to 1:10am Sun. Setup the backup battery to power the MP 40's&60's. Ran fine the whole time. Couldn't get the generator started to feed the heaters, so had to rely on the gas fireplaces in the house to keep the deepest chill away. Tank is currently warming back up, slowly. Found one of my heaters isn't heating any more (I have three, so only two work). Replaced #3 when I woke up. Tank looks fine so far, but will be monitoring. How'd your tank do? The glow of fireplace, reflected off the back up battery keeping the tank circulating. This morning, warming back up. 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaywood Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Good luck. Every reefer's worry. Our furnace stopped working for 3 hours, only to discover the side panel came loose which triggered the on/off switch. Felt we got lucky on a 20 year old furnace. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webbed Feet Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Very glad it seems you've avoided a Reeftastrophy, hope everything recovers well. Wish your neighbors as much positive for them as possible as well. I have both a computer intended battery back up from API that was designed to piggyback extra batteries and a mid-sized inverter generator waiting in the wings. I get about three to five hours on one circulating pump and 200 watts of heat depending on ambient temperatures I've noted it's advised to fire up generators once a month for one hour. I tend to let time slip by and go several months without doing so. I bet after this you'll be test running that generator more often if you've not been doing so. Looks like having your tank next to the fireplace worked out really well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lexinverts Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 50 minutes ago, obrien.david.j said: Hope everyone out there woke up safe and sound. Yesterday was not Snow-Mageddon, it was Tree-Down-Mageddon! Six trees down just beyond our fence, into our neghbors heard. (watched #6 fall) Four trees down onto a different neighbors roof, still visible from our back yard. And most impactful... We lost power. Our power was out 2:30pm Sat to 1:10am Sun. Setup the backup battery to power the MP 40's&60's. Ran fine the whole time. Couldn't get the generator started to feed the heaters, so had to rely on the gas fireplaces in the house to keep the deepest chill away. Tank is currently warming back up, slowly. Found one of my heaters isn't heating any more (I have three, so only two work). Replaced #3 when I woke up. Tank looks fine so far, but will be monitoring. How'd your tank do? The glow of fireplace, reflected off the back up battery keeping the tank circulating. This morning, warming back up. Yikes! Your tank got pretty cool. We were fortunate here in Corvallis and didn't lose power. We have more freezing rain in the forecast for Tuesday though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuncrestReef Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Glad your house wasn’t damaged. I still think my whole-house generator was one of my best investments, even now that I no longer have the aquarium. And I love that it automatically runs a self test each month and sends me health reports. Total peace of mind! 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eatfrenchfries Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 Close to 30 hours without power. Main marine battery is keeping my reptile/invert collection alive. Ran out of backup batteries to keep the aquariums heated and aerated. Been manually shaking the phytoplankton cultures every hour. Fingers crossed power is restored soon. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LavenderTi Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 (edited) 1 hour ago, SuncrestReef said: Glad your house wasn’t damaged. I still think my whole-house generator was one of my best investments, even now that I no longer have the aquarium. And I love that it automatically runs a self test each month and sends me health reports. Total peace of mind! My wife and I are going to be getting one this year. We switched to heat pumps from a gas furnace. A portable generator can’t run them. I didn’t even have to bring up the money saved due to not losing corals/fish. We went without power in the ice storm of 2021 for a week, so it’s a real concern. In 2021 I didn’t have an aquarium. We have a DC to AC inverter that I used power from our electric car to run the old furnace and the refrigerators. Edited January 14 by LavenderTi 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obrien.david.j Posted January 14 Author Share Posted January 14 1 hour ago, Eatfrenchfries said: Close to 30 hours without power. Main marine battery is keeping my reptile/invert collection alive. Ran out of backup batteries to keep the aquariums heated and aerated. Been manually shaking the phytoplankton cultures every hour. 30hrs, Crazy! Sorry to hear it. On my side, I'd planned my main backup being car battery feeding MP40/60's. It's really nice they already have a secondary plug, they switch to when main power goes out. And with a little research, it was SUPER easy to connect to a car battery I'd pre-planned and have running on a trickle charger. I actually made the wiring harnesses by headlamp, after the power had gone out. Bought all the parts, but was a little lazy putting the wire together. Parts are 12v deep cycle "car battery" - 100aH Trickle charger, plugged into the wall permanently inline pigtail fuse holders, with 2A fuse barrel plug for the 2nd power port of the MP controllers Spool of "lamp wire" to feed from the battery to the controllers 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LavenderTi Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 2 hours ago, Eatfrenchfries said: Close to 30 hours without power. Main marine battery is keeping my reptile/invert collection alive. Ran out of backup batteries to keep the aquariums heated and aerated. Been manually shaking the phytoplankton cultures every hour. Fingers crossed power is restored soon. I hope power comes back soon! 🤞🏻 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Sturges Posted January 14 Share Posted January 14 I live in the same area as DaveO so I suffered same outage. Got my generator running but with the house temp being around 46, my two 300 watt heaters could not keep up. I wrapped the tank in quilts even to keep it warm but was still losing the battle with the sump being downstairs the water running through the pipes acted as a chiller. Dave was kind enough to lone me a spare 600W heater he had as his generator was not working. Things all pulled through. Thanks Dave! 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deuce00 Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 (edited) I’m down power out here in Springfield Ore,going on 36 hours. Got lucky got a little generator today get the tank warmed up some. Lost a Blue Chromis so far I had for 5 years. Edited January 15 by Deuce00 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emerald525 Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 Power was out here from 11am Saturday to around 4pm Sunday. I have an interlock and generator and tested it before to make sure it worked and had 20 gallons of gas so I thought we were set. Then about 4 hours later there was a loud bang and the generator stopped working . We don’t have gas out here so it was a rough night. It was probably 40 degrees in the house and we layered up and put a lot of blankets in the bed and ran the car to charge our phones and heat up (with the garage door open of course) Tank was without power or heat for 22 hours. Temp was down to 52 degrees. I know nothing of engines but Sirena worked on cars in her teens and I was like Sirena you got this you can do this !! These engines are like old school cars . So she looked at some videos we took the engine apart in the shop and 2 hours later and a little bit of cursing she got it apart and cleaned it and it started working !!! I am so proud of her ! Power came back 2 hours later. It took about 4 hours to get the temp back to 72 with extra heaters thrown in. The puffer was not moving and I thought he was dead . My anemones were shrunk up. Surprisingly this morning everything even the sps is fine . Lessons learned: 1. I am going to use ethanol free gas as I don’t think the stabil really did anything . 2. I am buying another generator as a spare with dual fuel (propane and gas) 3. We need space heaters too as our heater even with a generator fails because the wifi fails and the only thing we can get going is the wood pellet stove. 4. Coral and fish can survive in 52 degree water without flow. Below is the thread I did when I was thinking about this . It may be of help. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webbed Feet Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 My Inverter (type of generator) is dual fuel propane / gas. I went that way because propane will store indefinitely without degrading. A few 40 to 60 lb propane tanks will beat out attempting to store gasoline for what our needs are. My inverter has never had gasoline in it and very well may never have gas in it. Many of these can be cleverly converted to natural gas as well, I believe it is just an internal valve change. I purchased an "iPower," however today I would go with a Champion inverter as they now have a model with insanely simple controls that automatically switches from gas to propane when the gas tank runs out. Thank you all for telling your stories. Very valuable information, I am taking notes and so should everyone else on our forum. I bet everyone with remote sumps that read all of this will consider insulating the pipes between sump and tank. All sorts of good to consider aspects from hearing about all of your struggles. I am sure glad very few reef losses so far!! Thank you all for telling your stories. Very valuable information, I am taking notes and so should everyone else on our forum. I bet everyone with remote sumps that read all of this will consider insulating the pipes between sump and tank. All sorts of good to consider aspects from hearing about all of your struggles. I am sure glad very few reef losses so far!! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eatfrenchfries Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 Hope everyone is doing well and they are keeping their tanks warm. Power came back on for me after 52 hours. Bad - Complete loss of life in all tanks (240g total). - Halted all pod production. Unknown if total loss. With my luck it'll just be Tigriopus and rotifers alive. - breeding projects....gone - bacteria culture projects..... gone Good - saved all of the phytoplankton in my collection. Shaken on the hour every hour. - only thing to survive the tank wipes was Sargassum (prefers cooler temps) - mangroves are fine Ran a Ecoflow delta, Yeti 1500x, and hooked up a marine battery. Managed to keep power up for close to 40 hours. After that I was charging power cells st work to take home. But in the end it was not enough. I staggered what I could, went manual where I could. The hardest part was keeping the heat up in my apartment. Next time I'll get a place with wood burning capability or allow gas/propane generator. Maybe I just had too many things to take care of. The big glass sliding door facing a frozen creek didn't help either, terrible insulation. Regardless, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Not sure where to go from here. Stepping away is not likely. Though my heart is definitely not in it right now. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krux Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 So sorry to hear about the losses... We are still powerless, and at this point since they have not given any update on their site about our outage since 7:30am on Saturday I do not expect it will be restored today either. We are fortunate enough that we were able to keep heat going and the tanks circulating, but I have not been home and have no idea what is going on with water chemistry in the tank. If the power comes back on I didn't unplug my return pumps, so all of that water from both tanks is going to get pumped into the displays - not sure what impact that will have. As of this morning I had only lost two coral and all fish are accounted for thanks to some DIY and help from friends, but I am not sure how much longer things will be able to hang on without light, alk and cal dosing, salinity stabilization, and proper flow. I am going to try to get a powerhead going in each sump when I get home to at least move water around a bit. I feel for you, once everything is running again please post how we can try to help you. If you need to buy new cultures I would support a "GoReefMe" campaign and kick in towards them. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emerald525 Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 5 hours ago, Eatfrenchfries said: Hope everyone is doing well and they are keeping their tanks warm. Power came back on for me after 52 hours. Bad - Complete loss of life in all tanks (240g total). - Halted all pod production. Unknown if total loss. With my luck it'll just be Tigriopus and rotifers alive. - breeding projects....gone - bacteria culture projects..... gone Good - saved all of the phytoplankton in my collection. Shaken on the hour every hour. - only thing to survive the tank wipes was Sargassum (prefers cooler temps) - mangroves are fine Ran a Ecoflow delta, Yeti 1500x, and hooked up a marine battery. Managed to keep power up for close to 40 hours. After that I was charging power cells st work to take home. But in the end it was not enough. I staggered what I could, went manual where I could. The hardest part was keeping the heat up in my apartment. Next time I'll get a place with wood burning capability or allow gas/propane generator. Maybe I just had too many things to take care of. The big glass sliding door facing a frozen creek didn't help either, terrible insulation. Regardless, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Not sure where to go from here. Stepping away is not likely. Though my heart is definitely not in it right now. My heart hurts for you Sharokh I don’t blame you for being so discouraged right now. Sounds like an awful 52 hours. I would also support a fundraiser to get you back on track and I’m sure others would too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LavenderTi Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 1 hour ago, Emerald525 said: My heart hurts for you Sharokh I don’t blame you for being so discouraged right now. Sounds like an awful 52 hours. I would also support a fundraiser to get you back on track and I’m sure others would too. My heart goes out to you @Eatfrenchfries not only the losses but also the stress of going through that 52 hours. Sorry you went through that and for your losses. I’d love to support a fundraiser. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obrien.david.j Posted January 16 Author Share Posted January 16 12 hours ago, LavenderTi said: My heart goes out to you @Eatfrenchfries not only the losses but also the stress of going through that 52 hours. Sorry you went through that and for your losses. I’d love to support a fundraiser. @Eatfrenchfries Sorry to hear about the devastation. Tell us how we can help. And feel free to PM me if I can personally help in any way. An update on my side... Do you know that new generators don't ship with Oil, and some have low oil detectors and will refuse to start without out any... I bought my generator "lightly used." Turns out, it was Never used - still completely dry. And of course, I'd never tried it before. Added oil yesterday, started on first pull. I'm now set for whatever today's ice storm brings. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjmdh Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 36 minutes ago, obrien.david.j said: An update on my side... Do you know that new generators don't ship with Oil, and some have low oil detectors and will refuse to start without out any... I bought my generator "lightly used." Turns out, it was Never used - still completely dry. And of course, I'd never tried it before. Added oil yesterday, started on first pull. I'm now set for whatever today's ice storm brings. They usually ship with a bottle of oil in the box. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obrien.david.j Posted January 16 Author Share Posted January 16 1 hour ago, cjmdh said: They usually ship with a bottle of oil in the box. And since I bought it "lightly used"... I didn't get the box, the bottle, nor even the manual. (once power and internet came back on, googled the manual) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talkalot82 Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 On 1/14/2024 at 7:58 PM, Deuce00 said: I’m down power out here in Springfield Ore,going on 36 hours. Got lucky got a little generator today get the tank warmed up some. Lost a Blue Chromis so far I had for 5 years. Did you get power yet? Are you in Thurston area? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talkalot82 Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 (edited) On 1/15/2024 at 12:45 PM, Eatfrenchfries said: Hope everyone is doing well and they are keeping their tanks warm. Power came back on for me after 52 hours. Bad - Complete loss of life in all tanks (240g total). - Halted all pod production. Unknown if total loss. With my luck it'll just be Tigriopus and rotifers alive. - breeding projects....gone - bacteria culture projects..... gone Good - saved all of the phytoplankton in my collection. Shaken on the hour every hour. - only thing to survive the tank wipes was Sargassum (prefers cooler temps) - mangroves are fine Ran a Ecoflow delta, Yeti 1500x, and hooked up a marine battery. Managed to keep power up for close to 40 hours. After that I was charging power cells st work to take home. But in the end it was not enough. I staggered what I could, went manual where I could. The hardest part was keeping the heat up in my apartment. Next time I'll get a place with wood burning capability or allow gas/propane generator. Maybe I just had too many things to take care of. The big glass sliding door facing a frozen creek didn't help either, terrible insulation. Regardless, it was definitely a learning experience for me. Not sure where to go from here. Stepping away is not likely. Though my heart is definitely not in it right now. I'm in Springfield but I have rotifers and copepods alive. Hopefully your just went into hibernation. Edited January 16 by talkalot82 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deuce00 Posted January 16 Share Posted January 16 (edited) 46 minutes ago, talkalot82 said: Did you get power yet? Are you in Thurston area? Yes I got some power yesterday evening and then it’s been off and on today. Im out in thurston. I have a generator and my 60g up and running. If you need anything let me know. I’ve noticed my mushroom corals don’t like the cold and all my clownfish died. Edited January 16 by Deuce00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manny Tavan Posted January 17 Share Posted January 17 (edited) I was without power for almost 24 hours. Used my champion 8750 watt inverter generator back fed into the dryer plug (safely). Ran my two tanks without light. The home furnace. The fridge. All the lights in the house. Ended up using about 10 gallon of gas in 24 hours. Edited January 18 by Manny Tavan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webbed Feet Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 19 hours ago, Manny Tavan said: I was without power for almost 24 hours. Used my champion 8750 watt inverter generator back fed into the dryer plug. Ran my two tanks without light. The home furnace. The fridge. All the lights in the house. Ended up using about 10 gallon of gas in 24 hours. Glad I have that set up and would recommend it for anyone with a reef tank. Glad you have what for a setup? Lacking any details as to how that was done electrically, doing what you described is very dangerous. I hope you just overlooked letting us know a few very important details about what all goes into hooking up to your home that way. I am very glad no life was lost, and I am including your reef pets! https://landmarktools.com/blogs/guides/how-to-connect-a-generator-to-your-home-without-a-transfer-switch 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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