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Tank Wipe Out! :(


Kermit

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Well heres a great start to the week after my long weekend away friday to sunday, i have just come into work where i have my 4foot tank setup and have lost the lot the cause a power spike on Sat afternoon had tripped the RCD breaker so the tank temperature is cold.

List of imediate death is;

1x Purple Tang

1x Yellow Tang

2x Purcula Clowns

2x Polymous Clowns

1x Bi Colour Blenny

1x Six Line Wrasse

2x Coral Banned Shrimp

2x Cleaner Shrimp

O lets wait for the Amo and Nitrate spikes hey then i'll up date to total deaths in corals as i have no more fish to kill.

So my mission today is to abuse the crap out of the power company and see what insurance we have and see what can be claimed if anything.

From one very sad person :(.

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Sorry to hear :cry:

I recommend a UPS (battery backup power supply) for heater and maybe one pump. That's what I've got setup and its great! I don't know whether they would last a weekend, but it might have helped reduce the deaths or at least saved some for your return on Monday. The bigger the UPS, the longer it will last.

Good luck.

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Yip i agrre with on that i'd only use the UPS to power up my heater and return pump not lights or other devices and beleive me i have thought about a UPS dam it, but UPS's are not to seen as a completely fail safe device either as a spike may trip the UPS internal safeties aswell we have had problems on our sites with internal faults and fulse tripping batteries need replacing ussually around the two year mark but againthat depends on brands but we'll never know weather it would have saved it or not.

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Well i'v never had any problems for the past year at least of amo's and nitrates and last tie i checked was about 1-2 weeks ago and all levels were sweet.

I'd say lack of water movement and temperature being cold would have killed them.

My remarks of wait till the amo and nitrate spikes hit is cos now the temperature has dropped me Bacterier is probably non existant and the high volume of loss (bodies) high bio load will surely cause a large spike in levels which will prob kill anything elese that maybe alive so moving my corals is a possability and as for my Anemones well i dont wana take the risk of poluting someone elses tank.

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Dude that sucks! I walked into my room as that power spike happened - my computer went weird, and the light flickered. Someone we know had all their appliances get fried!!

It wasnt that cold here, I went out to town in just a longsleeve shirt and it wasnt a problem.

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that sux big time dude.

the power went off to my tank for about 10 hours once and the temp only dropped to 23 degrees (down from 25) my main concern was water movement (aeration) in the main tank as opposed to heat loss (and a video i watched at a reef meeting a while ago said this was the biggest killer than loss of heat - as reef says the fish can sustain lower temperatures for a little while but no oxygen is worse).

the vid said you can buy battery powered air pumps that will suffice in a power outage - problem is if you're not home then its pointless. its got me thinking - specifically what happens with aeration on my tank if power fails now. might hook up a ups specifically for the closed loop.

good luck in getting your tank back to normal. if your corals die too send me a PM and I'll donate some frags to get you started again.

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I recommend a UPS (battery backup power supply) for heater and maybe one pump. That's what I've got setup and its great!

The problem is that a RCD is designed to trip to save you getting electracuted, a UPS is going to prevent this, so there is little point having both.

The best soultion is to have the tank running on multiple feeds, eg 1 for return pump, 1 for lighting, 1 for heating and other. That is what I do, so if one pops, which has happened, everything else keeps running.

Sorry for your loss.

Pie

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Cheers all for your replies just thought i'd share the carnage with you all.

Those battery operated air pumps could be switched automatically by a power failure relay to switch them in when power fails real easy.

Remember when purchasing a UPS by on the continous load rating and cos UPS are sold on KVA divide your load KW by 0.8 (power Factor).

so closed loop pump = 110watts (0.11KW)

heater = 500watts (0.5KW)

total = 610watts (0.61KW)

work on a 0.8 power factor so KVA would be 610 / 0.8 = 762.5 watts (0.7625KW) so you would want to ize your UPS on that value.

Also you want to make sure the UPS can take external batteries as the batteries in a UPS will only run a load for a short period of time so you will require a large external battery supply.

Other handy hints on purchase is to bye a dual on line UPS this means that the load is always been run through the inverter and the batteries are always on trickle charge which prolongs their life.

Also with dual on line UPS's is that cos your using the inverter and drawing load from the batteries all the time if there is an inverter fault or battery fault the UPS will go into mains bypass and warn you of a fault which is handy cos if theres a fault on a standby UPS you wont know of these faults untill there is a power failure which is too late by then.

Hope this helps people that are really looking at purchasing a UPS.

Robert

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Sorry to hear about your loss Kermit. :(

I just started my tank and have not experienced any outages yet. I though a power outage would be the worse. We have a few a year but in general they don't last that long. But a RCD tripping is something else (especially iof you are away).

I also thought that the worse would be lack of oxygen. If I look at the setup the our aerator is the overflow and the skimmer. With these being turned off oxygen will not be replenished. I had indeed thought about building a battery operated airpump in, that is switched by a relay that is kept open by the mains supply. I had given this a low priority there our power cuts are short but this puts a dufferent light on the issue.

Jeroen.

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That's true Pies, that's why I have an RCD between the UPS power outlet and the powerbox where the pump and heater are plugged in.

Interesting, I have tried to look into this a couple of time's, have even spoken to the engineers that service the UPS's I have a work and been unable to get an answer. The problem is that I'm not sure if the earth in the output side of the UPS is connected to the true earth. If not then the UPS would operate similar to an isolating transformer making the RCD redundant because a) your protected anyway and b) the RCD measures the difference between the common and earth, if the earth only goes to the UPS then you would have to have a problem between the device and the earth of the UPS for it to trip out not the real earth so it would be unlikely to work.

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Bad news.

Having multiple RCDs may not have helped as a spike capable of tripping one could just have easily tripped them all. Having multiple RCDs (with built in circuit breakers - don't think older RCD units combined the two devices) will help if you have an equipment malfunction.

I have had plenty of power problems in the past, the worst being when the tank was at work and the people installing air conditioning decided that they needed a new power feed and would therefore take one of the tank feeds (2 at the time).

Nothing happened at first but eventually the load proved too much for one circuit breaker. Power went off on the Sunday morning and by Monday the temp was down to 19°. I don't recall loosing any fish but lost a few corals, one of which I had had for nearly 10 years, in the lower secrtions of the tank.

The 2000L system I look after is connected to the buildings emegrency generator. I tried to tell them they only needed to worry about one supply for the pumps but it was easier just to put the lot on. This generator is about the size of a truck. I believe it has been used in anger.

Steve

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a) The earth on the output of a UPS is connected directly to the incomming earth and in some cases the neutral is grounded to earth hence why you should have RCD's on the output of your UPS, if the UPS neutral is grounded this may cause tripping of an RCD that supplies the UPS.

b) An RCD measures the difference between the phase and neutral, if the loads of the phase and neutral are unbalanced then the RCD will trip as one has to be down to earth for an unbalanced load to appear.

Another tip for of you is if you want to get past using an RCD on new circuit installations you can by perminently connecting the devices, this means the plugs are cut off and the devices are connected to power via a PCU unit thats as long as theres no plugs on the circuit so it would be a dedicated circuit.

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