Friday evening we had thunder storms in my area and they were fairly intense. They hit fast and hard, then we had sprinkles for the rest of the evening. First heavy wind came at about 6:30 or 7pm. A tree on the street outside my neighborhood fell across the road minutes before I went down the road. Thank God I hadn't left a couple minutes earlier! The fire trucks hadn't reached it yet and there was only one car in front of me to get around the tree. It took out the power lines along the street causing a blackout.
I got the bright idea to plug the power strip from the tank into a 400W power inverter for the car. I'm sure some people haven't heard of these wonderful tools. I picked it up at Home Depot for $35 or $40 bucks to use on a 10 hour road trip so that I could work on my laptop. I could have gotten the little dinky one that would have worked just fine to power my laptop but I wanted a good one so I stepped it up a couple notches and got the Husky 400W that will (supposedly) run some power tools. It plugs into your lighter, you flip it on and it has a couple outlets on it. I ran an extension cord to the car, cranked the car and plugged it in.
My first mistake was not unplugging the lights and heater from the power strip. I forgot that the lights were in the "on" position on the timer. So I blew the fuse in the inverter. Unfortunately they do not come with extras. We had to run out anyway to get some dinner since we couldn't fix the sloppy joes we were planning on making (because my handy gas range has a handy electric lock-down feature! If anyone knows how to override this, please let me know. Sears was no help.)
So we picked up some new fuses and got the thing working again. This time I plugged in the Tunze nano skimmer and a maxi jet 1200 for a half hour. This was around 1:00am. The power came back on around 7am. Things went fine and all seems to be well. No other problems with the fuse. The tank looks ok. All corals survived. Fluffy is alive and well.
So the moral of the story is - spend $40, get your tank a power inverter and definitely pick up some extra fuses. You will probably need it some day, even if not for the tank. Maybe you can use it for your laptop on a long road trip.
I got the bright idea to plug the power strip from the tank into a 400W power inverter for the car. I'm sure some people haven't heard of these wonderful tools. I picked it up at Home Depot for $35 or $40 bucks to use on a 10 hour road trip so that I could work on my laptop. I could have gotten the little dinky one that would have worked just fine to power my laptop but I wanted a good one so I stepped it up a couple notches and got the Husky 400W that will (supposedly) run some power tools. It plugs into your lighter, you flip it on and it has a couple outlets on it. I ran an extension cord to the car, cranked the car and plugged it in.
My first mistake was not unplugging the lights and heater from the power strip. I forgot that the lights were in the "on" position on the timer. So I blew the fuse in the inverter. Unfortunately they do not come with extras. We had to run out anyway to get some dinner since we couldn't fix the sloppy joes we were planning on making (because my handy gas range has a handy electric lock-down feature! If anyone knows how to override this, please let me know. Sears was no help.)
So we picked up some new fuses and got the thing working again. This time I plugged in the Tunze nano skimmer and a maxi jet 1200 for a half hour. This was around 1:00am. The power came back on around 7am. Things went fine and all seems to be well. No other problems with the fuse. The tank looks ok. All corals survived. Fluffy is alive and well.
So the moral of the story is - spend $40, get your tank a power inverter and definitely pick up some extra fuses. You will probably need it some day, even if not for the tank. Maybe you can use it for your laptop on a long road trip.
