Power was out 3 hours on Sunday

[John_Salmon]

Second time in 6 months where the power was out for more than two hours... I called the cops and they said a squirrel chewed through a power line downing the whole west side of town.... squirrel anyone?? well done??

Never until i had a reef tank did i care if the power was out for so long-only the inconvienience. I was almost going out of my mind just wanting it to kick back on. The questions i have is;

1. can a guy use one of those computer battery backup units for the main pump on the tank??

2. could you also leave it under the stand down by the sump or will it start to corrode really fast??

3. I have two battery backups lying around, a APC 280 & 700. how long would a 36w pump be able to opperate on one of these when the power goes out. also, how much additional power does one consume charging in relations to a pump?

Thanks

[JnS]

they will not last long, so pretty much worthless IMO. you need a generator if you really want to make sure there is water movement.

[David Grigor]

You likely need the ups systems that use deep cell marine batteries to get 8 hours + out of them. I used 2 marine deep cells on ups and could get 48 hours from a 28w return pump which is pretty good.

For my requirements, runtime of 8-12 hours is the minimum. 90% of the time outside of being out of town, that is about the longest the house would go unattended or while sleeping. The generator would be for anything longer than 12.

[John_Salmon]

I did some checking on ebay and found that if I lived in texas i could get a pretty good deal on a home generator $600 that would be gas powered. It would be cool, but since i don't want to go to texas I'll have to look around a little more.

I did find a runtime chart for for the apc 700 i have

http://www.apcc.com/products/runtime_for_extendedruntime.cfm?upsfamily=22

the estimated run time for 50w is close to an hour and a half. figuring that most of the time when the power goes out for me it always is down for about two hours i think that this would aleviate a little.

[David Grigor]

Be careful also what items you put on that UPS. While I don't know much about electronics the sine wave from them I believe is pretty poor and can ruin some motors. MJ though seem to be tough buggers and would be the best choice for such a ups. MJ900 as 8w would extent you to the 3 hours you seem to be targeting.

Frogbone is the resident UPS guru. I'd run everything past him before running a pump on it to make sure it is durable enough.

[John_Salmon]

"the sine wave from them" the shock wave?

I wanted to put one Mag 7.5 on it. I do have plans to at least upgrade to a Mag 9. I didn't even think about the possibility of a back up being hard on the pump.

Calling Frogbone??

[Frogbone]

I definitely would not use any type of APC UPS to run larger pumps.

Like Dave said, the MJ would be about as much as I would put on these.

In order to run any decent size pump you would need something in the range of 2.5 to 3 kva.

The best thing is to use a power inverter and deep cycle batteries that can be daisy chained.

Keep in mind that these battery backups are only designed to carry the load for a short time until either utility comes back on or a generator fires up.

To be safe I would definitely get a generator and then see what the longest period of time is that you would not be around if the power goes out.

Hook up an MJ1200, put in in a bucket of water and then plug it in to the APC 700. Monitor how long it will run after you unplug the UPS.

[David Grigor]

Better to use a MJ900 vs. a MJ1200.

MJ900 gets 230gph for 8w, MJ1200 uses more than double the watts ( 20w) to generate only 70gph more.

The is lots of info on RC about how clean ( or lack thereof ) of power from these units if you are technically minded and care to read it. Mostly over my head. I just know you don't want to put a Mag drive on this type of UPS.

[John_Salmon]

Yikes! you are right about just doing a back up generator considering that a battery back up that puts out 2kva or more is going to cost more than 900 bucks.

with your suggestions I do see that i definatley can't do what i origonally thought i could. I think that what I will do instead is use the upc 700 to power a hydor koralina 6 jets instead. If the power goes out, i would then possibly have an extra two hours of flow on the tank.

frogbone, what does this mean? "The best thing is to use a power inverter and deep cycle batteries that can be daisy chained." -power inverter??? how can you tell if the battery back up has deep cycle batteries?? I couldn't find that description on any of the battery backups from upc..

Thank you frogbone and dirk for your help!