A helpful reminder for people entering summer!
 

My power went out tonight- only for an hour luckily, but I ran around the house getting backup battery powered air pumps.

Summer is upon us and the power load is causing a lot of black and brown outs. Believe me, it's worth buying off-the-grid backups now, rather than going crazy later!

Not to mention the storms. I live in the DC area, and last week we had really horrible thunderstorms and we lost power for about 24 hours. I didn't have the lighting on my tanks on any sort of backup, and all of my anacharis bit the dust in that 24 hour period.

I have already had two power outages in the last 1-2 weeks.. Luckily, they were both in the middle of the day when the heaters were not on, and both lasted under 30 minutes. I was much more worried about my reef than my FW tanks, but it still was bad for FW. I still need to invest in the air pumps, however. Thanks for reminding me!

Something a bit better that Circuit City sells are those backup battery surge protectors, you can get them in any size, (bigger obviously lasting longer) that way lights, heaters, filters, etc can be plugged in simultaneously.

I have an emergency generator. Lights up the whole house when the power goes out. I couldn't afford that many battery air pumps!!

I had forgotten about possible power outages. I live in Southern California and every summer we have the usual heat wave. It usually lasts from two to six days but once the mercury hits 90 anyone who has air conditioning, fans, etc. turns them up fullblast and out goes the power. It doesn't last long but I'm sure the fish think it does!
(Funny how we beachniks think 90 is hot...obviously none of us have spent much time in the desert or the mid-west. We are a bunch of pansies!)

I've got a generator that takes two men to lift and it is loud, loud, loud.
I'm sure my neighbors would revolt.
Looking into the battery back up is a great idea. Thanks for the tip!

Kym

I shudder to think about how much money you'd be out if you ran out of power for a few days. All of those fish...

Unfortunately, none of those are powerful enough to last very long. I had one of my 10 gallons plugged into a pretty decent one, just as a test, and it only lasted about 15-20 minutes. If you want anything other than aeration generators are still the only way to go.