Dealing with power outages and the effect on bio filtration.

[kimura]

i have a wet/dry and a fluval fx5 on my 240 gallon tank. for the last two years i've been getting 5-6 short(1-4 hours) power outages a year. what is the best way to preserve my biological filtration when this happens? how long will the bacteria stay alive in each of my respective filters? i have a battery backup on my wet/dry pump that keeps it going for about an hour but the fx5 sucks like 50 watts so i dont think a battery is an option. i was thinking of an electric generator but is there anyway to set one to automaticly come on when the power dies? PG&E worked on the lines the other day and had the power off for like 7 hours which caused my ammonia to spike up to 2.0. ive dosed it with prime and changed 160 gallons in the last 2 days but im really looking to avoid this situation in the future. my heavily planted 75 gallon was out for the same time but didnt get a spike. its running a fluval 404 and i assume its the plants absorbing the ammonia as well as the extra surfuce area in the tank because of the leaves that helped with the quick recovery. any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated. thanks

[adampetherick]

I've been looking into this and all I've found so far is a manual switch

http://www.justgenerators.co.uk/pages/powertransfer.htm

But if you're there to switch it over manaully then might as well just plug the power into the generator yourself.

The only auto option so far is but $3999 is a bit to pricy for me!

http://www.amazon.com/Briggs-Stratton-A ... B000CSQAA4

[mikev]

Given the huge price difference, I went with manual. One missing component which I'm planning on adding is the alarm on power-out: I may be there, but I may be asleep too.

Incidentally, the generator proved its worth a couple of weeks ago: it had no problem running seven tanks for a few hours.

[adampetherick]

On the controller for the tank I'm planning there is an SMS option that sends a text when there is a powercut, no use if I'm on holiday but if I'm just out in town or at work then I should be able to sort something out