Pretty bummed! Reminder to check your power outage plan!

Lost power and lost most all of my fish! I've been in the hobby over 10 years and I have never had this happen. Feeling a little ashamed of myself as I should have known better and did not have a back-up plan in place. I have a plan when I know the power has gone out, but not if the breaker flips and I'm not aware of it.


I've been putting off setting up my apex on its own UPS to alert me of power outage and my battery back-up pump has needed a new airstone for awhile now and I didn't have it setup.


Having my tank in the basement and mostly automated, I often go a few days without going down there. In this case I had just done some maintenance Saturday morning and turned on my dehumidifier which I believe tripped the circuit shortly after. I wasn't made aware until later this evening when my roommate noticed the power out and flipped the breaker back on.


Survived: 3 Clownfish, 3 Green Chromis, Bangaii Cardinal, yellowtail blue damsel, 1 cleaner shrimp


RIP: Blue Tang, Yellow Tang, Flame Angel, Coral Beauty Angel, sixline wrasse, 3 anthias, 1 Cleaner Shrimp


MIA: Royal Gramma I've had for 10 years, purple firefish


Coral seems to be okay, but just a reminder for all of you out there to make sure you have a back-up/powerfail plan in place. Battery air pumps are cheap and if I had it installed, it probably would have sufficed long enough to avoid such a disaster.


Happy MACNA week /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/sad.gif

 

How long was it out ?

 

Man so sorry to here this buddy. I have my Apex hooked up to reeftronics and they email me with in an hour after power has shut off. It's a great free service .

 

So sorry to hear that Lee. Did your coral survive??


I bought some battery back-up air pumps in the spring for just this purpose - but I also have not found the time to set them up or even test them......

 

Lee,
You are such a nice guy, I am sorry this happened to you. I am glad you shared it though so that others can learn from your loss. I currently have a backup plan that works only if I am at home. It consists of a powerful gasoline generator. We are considering getting a natural gas whole house generator as our basement sump pump runs constantly. Sometimes during drought conditions. We are near a natural spring or a mystical portal to freshwater.

 

Lee, was it a regular breaker or the newer required Arc Fault breaker? Had the same thing happen to me where the arc fault tripped when we weren't home. I had no idea until I went down. It was off for about 24 hours and I got lucky and didn't lose anything. I have since replaced the arc fault with a regular breaker.

 

Bummer! That is probably not something people consider until they have to deal with an outage.

 

Lee, not sure on how your house is set up (finished basement, open breakers, etc.) But when I set up my tank I ran a dedicated 30 amps to the tank and split down to protect each power strip w/ 15 amp (strips rated current) fuses. Was afraid a similar situation could happen. 30 amp requires 10g wire but worth it if you plan to run a lot of accessories and the added peace of mind.

 

I think it was close to 24 hours, I'm having a hard time deciphering the apex alerts that said when power was lost/restored. Coral all survived, just most of the fish died (all the cool ones!!). I am glad the clowns made it though, had them about 10 years too.


I'm not sure on the breaker type. My house is less than 4 years old if that helps answer it? Basement is unfinished and only 1 circuit down there that unfortunately isn't enough for all the tank equipment AND the dehumidifier....maybe the sump pump kicked on too, who knows...


Been really wanting to get a dedicated standby generator (natural gas/LP), and after talking with a buddy who's an electrician, I might head that route sooner than later.


For those of you that "haven't gotten around to it.." I urge you to follow through with the plans and not put it off any longer...I know I regret it now!


Here are a few pictures from just a few days ago:

 

If your house is less than 4 years old, then yes. You have Arc Fault Breakers. Google search them and while they are great in concept, they are so sensative that they trip WAY too often and when there is nothing wrong. Electric motors are big causes of them tripping. Things like vaccums, paper shredders, the electro-magnet in my pinball machine (this only happens mid-game), or even pumps in our aquariums or sumps... These are things that are known to be detected by the arc fault breaker as a "false positive" and it trips.

Take out the $35 Arc Fault breaker, and put in a $6 regular breaker. Don't throw away the Arc Fault as you will need it if you ever sell the house down the road. This will help you to get by until some other power solution can be devised. This is a lot cheaper than a generator, or adding more circuits, which both are fine ideas, but when money and time are involved, sometimes you can get past the main problem pretty quickly, and in this case $6 plus about 5 minutes of time to swap it out. Of course, if you are concerned about getting into the breaker box, contact your electrician buddy.

Keep this in mind that even if you have a generator, unless it is tied in ONLY to your aquarium, and done so via a direct line to the aquarium (which isn't how most are done. Most go through the circuit breaker box.) you will still run the risk of that circuit tripping again, even with the generator.


I guess that this is just a good reminder that there are multiple layers to a power outage plan.

I fixed my tripping arc fault breaker (this particular one has tripped only 4 times ever, and 3 were when I used either a paper shredder or vacuum on the same circuit, and one time for the unknown reason that took power down for 24 hours). I have 8 dedicated circuits in my basement, and unfortunately the one that my aquarium is on is shared by our office in the basement that has a desktop PC, good sized media server, and the stupid paper shredder in it. I didn't plan on an aquairum when I wired the basement otherwise it would have been super easy to add a dedicated circuit just for that.

Someday I will replace that arc fault breaker for the game room too so that I can play pinball without wondering if the electro-magnet is going to trip the breaker mid-game or not. Of course if multiple people are playing on multiple machines, they all lose when the power goes out.

Anyway, I just mention all of this about the arc fault breakers since IT is the root cause of your power outage. If there was a regular breaker in there, this wouldn't have happened since it doesn't seem like your system is overloading that circuit, otherwise it would be tripping all of the time.

 

that's a bummer Lee, sorry to hear that.

your tank looks great though.

 

You just have too much on one breaker. Have your electrician buddy run you 2 new 20 amp circuits and put half your aqurium stuff on on each. Out you're return on one and your circulation pumps on the other. If the basement is unfinished it should be easy and not that expensive.

How much did he think the generator would cost? I want one but I think it's going to be $5000.