Power Outage... things to consider.

[FutureInterest]

Alright just sharing one of my many reef mistakes to hopefully help prevent someone else from doing the same...

A few nights ago we lost power for 4.5 hours from 1-5:30 am. When I got up at 5 I noticed it then and saw the texts from the apex... but they weren't loud enough to wake me from my slumber. I do have a power fail alarm that I picked up awhile ago that is crazy loud. It has done its job in the past... but it is battery powered and I didn't realize it was out of juice. I can't turn on a generator if I'm sound asleep. I've toyed with the idea of getting a whole house generator and auto transfer switch... but we always have someone at home so I just went old school.

Everything seemed fine in all the tanks... until that evening... Apparently in my coral QT tank quite a few of the sponges died and I didn't notice. They decomposed and caused the tank to cycle. There was an odd foul fish smell slowly permeating the house but I attributed it to some fermented fish (norwegian rakfish) that I had earlier and had discarded the rest in the trash. I threw out the trash... and thought to myself... dang that smell is really lingering this time. It turns out it was the smell of decomposing matter in the QT tank which smells a LOT like rakfish. Anyways, I lost some good worker fish that have been with me for some time due to my ineptitude and fondness for foul smelling seafood...

Fortunately, all the other tanks didn't have an issue since they have mp40 powerheads on battery backup. The one fish that lived was Lucy... our yellow tang that survived getting her tail bitten off by a puffer. She truly has a will to live and I'm glad she's still kicking.

So lessons I've learned:

• If you get a power fail alarm, get one that has its own rechargable battery. Something like these alarms would be better than what I had.
• Have some sort of backup device that will move water in case of power failure. Even something cheap like this would help.
• The issues from extended power loss may not be immediately apparent.
• Rakfish and decaying reef life smell awfully similar.

 

[jcook54]

Thanks! One additional thing I did was sign up for text alerts from GA Power. They'll notify you when the power is out at the specified location. I don't have an Apex but the notifications from GA Power have given me time to make a plan when I'm on the road. Of course that plan was to call a friend who was in town. (I can't recommend enough that having a "tank buddy" can really save your rear if something goes sideways)

 

[bhodges82]

Fortunately my neighborhood has buried power lines and we have a large line array that runs through the neighborhood, if my power goes out it's only for a few minutes. It would tank a pretty large disaster to interrupt our supply. In the past at a different house i did have to borrow my bosses generator for a few days when a tree fell on our main line, worked out ok.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

 

[lmm1967]

if you want to tinker and are OK spending $25 or less......

https://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Simple-Power-Outage-Monitor/

Once you have done this sort of thing a time or 2 - you end up with all sorts of interesting ideas to apply this kind of stuff too.

 

[ichthyoid]

Sorry this happened, but glad it wasn't any worse.
It's always good to share about when bad things happen and better, how to avoid them in the future!

For the new build, I'll have my MP10's on an Ecotech battery backup(s).
The return pump and/or Apex/12VDC power supply, will be on a UPS.
Now, the question comes up about whether to plug Apex into UPS & EB8/power strip into the wall, or, the other way around?
In either case, as I understand it, you will need to plug either the Apex or EB8 into a wall outlet to sense the failure, correct...?

 

[ichthyoid]

FWIW, I found these on a Neptune thread-

"What I did was get a 12v AC/DC power supply to feed the APEX. Then I plugged the power supply into the wall (or a power strip or whatever), then plugged my energy bar into the UPS. I then wrote outlet code like "If Power Apex Off 000 Then OFF" for anything non-critical to save power when the power goes out. Make sure under Misc Setup that you have Power Monitoring enabled.

Don't plug the AC/DC adapter into the UPS.... It's only used as a sensor... so it needs to not have power when the power fails. Your APEX unit will draw power from the EnergyBar."

And...

"You can do it the other way as well - plug the 12v into the UPS and the EBx into the wall. You would do it this way if you didn't have a large enough UPS to power your devices but you wanted to keep your controller alive for email alerts, avoid power disruptions that could corrupt/damage, etc.

Kind of depends on the size of the UPS."

 

[lmm1967]

Sorry this happened, but glad it wasn't any worse.
It's always good to share about when bad things happen and better, how to avoid them in the future!

For the new build, I'll have my MP10's on an Ecotech battery backup(s).
The return pump and/or Apex/12VDC power supply, will be on a UPS.
Now, the question comes up about whether to plug Apex into UPS & EB8/power strip into the wall, or, the other way around?
In either case, as I understand it, you will need to plug either the Apex or EB8 into a wall outlet to sense the failure, correct...?

Don't forget to keep your internet up during a power outage as well.

I have a whole home generator that both starts automatically and notifies me via email and text. Absent of that - I would not plug the apex or primary EB8 into a UPS. I would plug a secondary EB8 or 4 in to a UPS, plug in anything I want to run druing a power outage and make sure FALLBACK ON is programmed on these outlets.

I would rather the apex and main EB8 lose power and let fusion tell me it's lost connection. Keeping just the bare minimum on a UPS allows those things to run as long as possible without wasting battery power on stuff that isn't absolutely necessary to maintain life.

 

[ichthyoid]

I have the modem & router on a separate UPS.
I looked into a whole home system, back when I ran 100+ gallon systems.
Our subdivision is next to a substation and rarely (knock on wood) looses power for too long.
Using battery backups as a solution is less than 1/10th the cost and almost as good for us.
I haven't found a generator yet that runs longer than 25-50 hours without an oil change. They may/probably exist, just haven't found an affordable one.
I agree with keeping only life sustaining systems online.

 

[seand]

Alright just sharing one of my many reef mistakes to hopefully help prevent someone else from doing the same...

A few nights ago we lost power for 4.5 hours from 1-5:30 am. When I got up at 5 I noticed it then and saw the texts from the apex... but they weren't loud enough to wake me from my slumber. I do have a power fail alarm that I picked up awhile ago that is crazy loud. It has done its job in the past... but it is battery powered and I didn't realize it was out of juice. I can't turn on a generator if I'm sound asleep. I've toyed with the idea of getting a whole house generator and auto transfer switch... but we always have someone at home so I just went old school.

Everything seemed fine in all the tanks... until that evening... Apparently in my coral QT tank quite a few of the sponges died and I didn't notice. They decomposed and caused the tank to cycle. There was an odd foul fish smell slowly permeating the house but I attributed it to some fermented fish (norwegian rakfish) that I had earlier and had discarded the rest in the trash. I threw out the trash... and thought to myself... dang that smell is really lingering this time. It turns out it was the smell of decomposing matter in the QT tank which smells a LOT like rakfish. Anyways, I lost some good worker fish that have been with me for some time due to my ineptitude and fondness for foul smelling seafood...

Fortunately, all the other tanks didn't have an issue since they have mp40 powerheads on battery backup. The one fish that lived was Lucy... our yellow tang that survived getting her tail bitten off by a puffer. She truly has a will to live and I'm glad she's still kicking.

So lessons I've learned:

• If you get a power fail alarm, get one that has its own rechargable battery. Something like these alarms would be better than what I had.
• Have some sort of backup device that will move water in case of power failure. Even something cheap like this would help.
• The issues from extended power loss may not be immediately apparent.
• Rakfish and decaying reef life smell awfully similar.

I draw the line at kimchi. If you can confuse dinner with decamp you may want to modify your diet..just saying

 

[Mom2Many]

Thanks for sharing this... It and the following posts gave me a lot to think about. Sorry you had trouble though. It sucks when we loose fish, especially those we have had a while and are fond of.