PDA

View Full Version : Power Failure & ATS issues/concerns....



nanomania
10-28-2012, 10:12 AM
I would like to know that what would happen if there is a power failure... will it leach out all the nutrients once the light is back? or will i have to clean the screen again? and what if the algae dries if the electricity goes out for long time? these are the biggest issues/concerns....

kotlec
10-28-2012, 10:15 AM
Just clean all dead matter away completely ,if screen happens to dye. Nothing leaches back then.
UAS is more prone to power failure.

nanomania
10-28-2012, 10:18 AM
I hate UAS coz i hate bubbles in my tank and hate the sound and salt creep too... also iv read many threads where water fall worked better then UAS.....

Ace25
10-28-2012, 10:28 AM
If your power is out long enough for the algae to dry out on the screen, you are going to have MUCH bigger things to worry about, ie. dead fish/corals. If you are home when the power goes out and you are taking measures to keep everything alive (air pump, battery backup, generator, etc) then it shouldn't be a problem to take the screen off and just stick it in the water until power returns.

nanomania
10-28-2012, 10:33 AM
well i dont think the power will ever go that long that the fish dies, my main concern is leaching out all the nutrients back in the tank......

SantaMonica
10-28-2012, 10:34 AM
UAS is more prone to power failure.

No, a UAS scrubber is not more prone to power failure. Your electrical system in your house is what determines how prone you are to power failure.

When your house does have a power failure, a UAS scrubber will actually survive much, much longer than a waterfall, because a UAS scrubber stays underwater. Thus a UAS scrubber can go without any power for up to 3 days with no harm; just turn the power back on and it works fine without even needing to clean it.

A waterfall scrubber, however, will probably be completely dead in the first day. You will have to clean it, and it will be starting back from new when the power comes back on. Depending how much growth it had (and if it was enclosed) when the power went out, it may be completely dead in a few hours.


I hate UAS coz i hate bubbles in my tank and hate the sound and salt creep too.

Then why don't you build a bubble remover?


also iv read many threads where water fall worked better then UAS

A UAS scrubber needs to be built properly, just like a waterfall, for it to work. Do you know how many waterfall scrubbers I can point to that were not built correctly and did not work?

kotlec
10-28-2012, 10:40 AM
I meant Waterfall of course... Dont know why I said that :D

nanomania
10-28-2012, 10:40 AM
hmm.... but what about the bubbles and the sound it makes all the time........ + it dosent wor as good as water fall....

Ace25
10-28-2012, 10:41 AM
Well, fish can die in as little as an hour in a power outage, depending on tank size/fish load and available oxygen... an ATS screen will take about 6 hours to dry out, and then probably another 6 hours after that before it becomes an issue of leaching dead stuff back into the water (which if you just clean most of the algae off it isn't an issue). Algae is very strong and can handle being out of water for a looooooooong time. Anyone who has bought 'dead dry rock' can attest to that because even the cleanest looking dry rock can become covered in algae in under a week even in a new tank that doesn't have any algae in it. That is because there are still a lot of algae spores in the dry rock that will quickly start growing once placed back into proper living conditions.

Same thing can be said about aiptasia. I have let rocks covered in algae and aiptasia sit outside in the sun for over 30 days to dry out, then soaked in RO/DI water for several weeks... after placing the rocks back into saltwater the aiptasia and algae came right back.

nanomania
10-28-2012, 10:48 AM
Oh dint know that..... as far as the fishes go, i have 4 fish in 30g total tank water volume.... well fishes come from out and stay in a small bag for more then 8hrs... dont die... so i guess that wont be a concern for me.. iv faced 8hrs max once in a life time, rest of the time its no more than 4-6hrs that happen 2-4 times a year...

SantaMonica
10-28-2012, 10:49 AM
what about the bubbles and the sound it makes all the time

Depends how you build it. Like I said, why don't you build a bubble remover. If you want quiet, use thicker walls.

Most UAS scrubbers (almost all) you have seen so far have just been 1-sided, and you are comparing them to 2-sided waterfalls. Can't do that. You need to compare 1-sided to 1-sided, or 2-sided to 2-sided.

You may not know it, but it took 2 to 3 years to figure out how to get waterfall scrubber to "grow green".

nanomania
10-28-2012, 11:05 AM
Hmm... well ill use the red 660nm led....

Ace25
10-28-2012, 11:17 AM
Last fish I bought was a $150 Kueteri wrasse.. came from Los Angeles in a bag, 2 hour drive, and was dead when I opened the bag. There are too many factors to just say 'fish come in bags and live fine for x amount of hours'. Was the bag filled with air or oxygen, was the bag big enough to hold enough oxygen to last the entire trip? Can the fish survive rising ammonia levels in the bag due to respiration? The last fish I bought either didn't have enough oxygen or had ammonia poisoning from the trip and didn't make it.

I have seen many people have fish die in 100G+ tanks due to power outages that lasted 3-4 hours when they didn't do anything other than wait for the power to come back on. Oxygen is the #1 concern in power outages, second would be temperature. A cheap battery powered air pump will save your fish 99% of the time in short term power outages.

nanomania
10-28-2012, 11:22 AM
well what i do, if im there when the power is gone, is I kee stiring the water with my hand every 15 mints........ i guess we need to have UPS (used for computers) we can atleast use it for pumps like the the WM or ATS pump or both, if not the entire tank....