Odd question about power outages

[Future]

With a new storm about to hit Florida, I started wondering...

I work during storms most of the time, always have because I'm an idiot like that. If I placed an air filter into the tank while I'm working in case the power goes out, will the bubbles hurt anything? At most it would be a few hours before I get home and the generator is turned on because in an apartment I have to do it manually.

I'm not worried about the few hours w/o flow, it's just when the power goes out here the place warms up quite a bit and even the airstone will help by creating surface tension.


OR....

Do they sell PH's that turn on when power goes out? If not my next project is going to be dissecting an airstone to turn it into some kind of flow..ha ha ha

[charlie]

Alot of folks have the same setup you do. I don't think the bubbles will cause any damage at all. Good luck!!!!! JMHO

[Samper]

Without any other circulation in the display the bubbles are just going to float to the surface and won't cause any harm.

I can't keep some microbubbles out of my display because of the way my refugium empties into it....I need to rethink the design. The powerheads just blast them around and they float up and pop. So far with over a year in operation on that system and no harm has come to anything.

The only suggestion that I have depending on how your lighting is arranged is that you may want to raise the lights while the air pump is running. My T5s sit directly on top of the display and the microbubbles constantly popping causes me to have to clean the reflectors weekly.

Good luck with Fay.

[Future]

Sounds good, I think I'll still try dissecting an airstone thingy and figuring out how to create a makeshift PH. Thanks

Sampler,
My T5's are on legs, so total distance above water is roughly 5-6 inches. However I have a piece of the old glass hood directly under the lights anyway

[Ninong]

If I placed an air filter into the tank while I'm working in case the power goes out, will the bubbles hurt anything?

The bubbles won't hurt anything.

At most it would be a few hours before I get home and the generator is turned on because in an apartment I have to do it manually.

Are you on the ground floor? I hope you have one of the quiet types, like Honda? Our Generac-7500 makes so much noise that I can't believe anything that noisy would be allowed in an apt complex.

I'm not worried about the few hours w/o flow, it's just when the power goes out here the place warms up quite a bit and even the airstone will help by creating surface tension.

The ideal solution is to get a UPS with enough capacity to operate your pumps for a few hours until you can start up the generator.

The biggest problem I had following Katrina was that I didn't have my chiller hooked up yet and the room temperature skyrocketed the second day after the storm when the temp hit 98 degrees with humidity in the 80's. The generator was not powerful enough to run the downstairs central A/C along with all the other crap we had online (3 refrig/freezers). We didn't even try to run the upstairs A/C until the fourth day. We were able to get that A/C unit on by turning off one of the freezers (we moved the good stuff into the other units). That actually helped lower the downstairs temp a little but my tank's water temp hit 90 degrees on the Wednesday after the storm and that's when I started to lose stuff.

We were extremely lucky in that we were only without power for four days while most of the area around us (within half a mile) was without power for three to four weeks. Just 40-50 miles south (New Orleans) some areas were without power for several months.

[Future]

Yea after Katrina and Wilma we were w/o power for 3 weeks. Luckilly I'm in a duplex, so this noisy generator isn't that bad of a problem. I just shove it 30ft away from the house.

The UPS I have here will last only 6hours, but I think the battery is going to hell in a handbasket because the last time I checked it, it lasted 4 hours