My power just went out, it came back on in less than five minutes, but last week it was out for about half an hour.

I'm wondering about battery backups for the filters and air pump. How much are they, where do you buy them, how long do the batteries last? I don't have the funds to do it right now, but it'd be nice to know for future reference.

Also I'm wondering if the power does go out, what do I do?

If I'm home and awake when it happens, my plan is to grab the media out of the filters and stick it in some pantyhose in the tank. If I'm not here or I'm asleep... I am just hoping my media doesn't end up all dried out before I can get to them.

I have two rather small fancies in a 40 gallon tank, so I think I have a bit more wiggle room than could be. I figure if the power goes out, I should stop feeding right?

I know about the battery powered air pumps, but I'm broke.

Push comes to shove, a big water change during the day with some Prime and a lot of manual water turnover through out the day should get them through?

*prays to the fishy gods that the wind doesn't knock any trees into a power line*

There are battery backup - I have 4 of them - that will run your tanks/pumps/filters/computer/etc.... but they do cost....

I found mine at Fry's store. They are made mostly for computer backup - but I use them for tanks as well as computer/TV/etc. They come in all power configurations...

I have 685AVR CyberPower backup batteries. All the filters and a few air features are plugged into them at all times. The battery is then plugged into the wall. Anytime the power glitches or goes out, the battery kicks in instantly. This prevents the filters from loosing prime - they do not even hiccup. Depending on how much you want to run and how long you want to run it, you can purchase a bigger or smaller battery. I do nothave the biggest ones, nor the smallest.

I think this is one of them. I spent about $70. @ for them at Frys.... (cheaper there, I think - definately more selection!))

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?ty...d=1099396538742

Add up the amount of power you need to run. I calculated that. With those calculations, I can run 6 tanks worth of air/filters for approximately 3 hours. I can manually pull out extraneous filters if I find that I have a LONG power outage and I want to preserve battery power. With only one filter per tank, I should be able to run for about 5 hours..... I tested it to the 3 hours - it actually went about 3 hours 10 minutes.... We get a LOT of small outages - lasting from hiccups to 1 hours. We have a large generator that will run the whole house that we have to maually start if the power is out for more than that time.....

I Have one on the sets of tanks in each room.

You are just a wealth of information, thank you so much!

This is going on my christmas list, and if nobody gets it for me, then I guess it'll be put off for my birthday list.

The power flickered several times while I was still awake, I stayed up until 4am, but after that I just couldn't take it anymore and crashed, I woke up to the sound of filters and airpumps just like normal, and the aquaclear didn't fry itself, so I'm assuming there was no significant power outage while I slept... the fishy gods have smiled upon us.