Why should I have a back-up power supply?

[Future]

Being I haven't seen too much about having an emergency back-up power supply, I figured I'd show everyone just what can happen if you end up in the position where you're electric is out.

This is how things go downhill after 2 weeks without any power...

Week 3:
First you find yourself using tap water as your top off source because RO/DI is just not available. This is when you may begin seeing the red algae begin and your tank can end up looking like Picture #1

Week 5:
The red algae has subsided because it's been overtaken by other algae such as hair algae, diatoms increase because you can't keep everything controlled manually, and your only source for light it the sunlight during the day which is only feeding the algae we don't want in our tanks like Picture #2

Finally you give up all hope because the whole system just about came to a dead stop crash.


There is hope however because there is still life in them there waters. So you can regenerate the system, basically from square 1, but you will end up kicking yourself for now having that back-up power supply.


The images posted are what my tank looked like after the 2005 hurricanes. We were without power for 3 1/2weeks and generators were in high demand and difficult to find. When you did find one, gas was nowhere to be found. Why I took pictures and kept them is because I wanted the reminder for myself as to be sure it NEVER happened again.
If this is enough to convince just 1 person into a back-up plan, then it was worth the effort.

Edit Note: Just lowered the image upload sizes