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UPS (1 Viewer)

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Guest

I am planning to add a UPS to my new tank. The tank will house soofties and leathers. The extra I have is 350va. My question is this, what do I plug into it ... should I:

1. run as many lights as it will power for a few hours
2. run less lights but get a longer period
3. Skip the lights altogether and keep the water moving
4. Make some sort of combo of less lights and moderate pumping

What does everyone think? ANy one have a UPS set up?
 
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Guest

Don't put the lights on the UPS. Circulation and aeration are your primary concerns in a power outage.
 
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Guest

ONLY use it for a powerhead. Or Pump. Thats how i have mine setup. A Maxi only uses 20w and it will not die as fast as having lights on it too as it will suck up all the juice off of the UPS.
 
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Guest

make sure that ups stays away and out of the water........they are a bomb if you get them wet......
 
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Guest

Don't run any lights at all. If you are going to use a UPS you should run the lowest wattage pump you have, pointed towards the surface of the water. This will provide minimal circulation and aereation for the tank until the power is restored.

I am fortunate that I have Tunzes. These are very low wattage, high output pumps. I have one of mine on a UPS, and it has worked for over a day without power before (unplugged UPS to test overnight when I went out of town once). I unplugged it on a Wednesday evening, and when I returned Friday morning it was still running strong.

Jim
 
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Niko5

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Yea what they said put 1 power head on it. Its also a good idea to get one of those plug in GFI's to put on the pump you plug into your UPS even if you have a GFI on the wall if the ups is electrocuting you and kicks the wall gfi the battery will kick in and keep on electricuting u
 
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Guest

succubus said:
make sure that ups stays away and out of the water........they are a bomb if you get them wet......
Click to expand...

Do we know this from personal experiance?? :lol:
 
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Guest

Thanks Nick :) They are coming out monday to install GFCI plugs, but I had not thought about the battery continuing the process :)

I have a large one (not the 360va) that will run my 22" monitor for over an hour, so I figure it would run a few pumps for a few days. I bet in water it would pack quite a wallop :)
 
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Guest

An average (~22") CRT monitor will use up 115 watts.

http://tinyurl.com/5nsrr

A Maxijet 1200 (295 gallons per hour) uses 20 watts.

http://tinyurl.com/6bgkp

Tunze 6000 (1850 gph) uses 15 watts

http://tinyurl.com/5cxm7

Therefore, if your UPS can run your monitor for 1 hour, it can then run a single maxijet for about 5 hours, or 5 Maxijet 1200s for 1 hour, or 1 Tunze 6000 for 7 hours.

Pumps use up a lot of power, and will drain a UPS very quickly.
 
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Guest

i have a UPS running on charger but they only run for about 3-5 hrs. I have my pump hook up to it so if anything fail at least it my tank can survive awhile.
 
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Guest

incysor -- it looks from the picture as if they have taken a used UPS and replaced the standard drycell battery with a 12V car battery. The charger circuits and power roll-over circuits generally last a lot longer than the battery as it is in a constant charge/drain cycle. My brother does that for the broke ones he gets from work and resells them to RV'ers. It has a standard 3 prong plug on the back so you just plug it into a wall outlet and plug the things you want to keep juiced into it. Do be aware that using a car battery does produce some HCL fumes so keep it well ventilated.

As far as the timing on my UPS :) I would have to determine the watts the computer itself pulls to get a real time on running the pumps -- I expect the 'puter pulls at least as much power as the monitor -- soon as I get things setup I will run the pump, and let everyone have a more accurate timing any case anyone wants to plan a simular setup.
 
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Guest

I found an inexpensive one on www.pricewatch.com. It's an Inspra 650Va for $39 shipped from 3btech.net. Here's the url:

http://3btech.net/in65upspobar.html

I've got it running the ac300 on my 2.5g. I got it after we had a 2.5 hour power outage a couple of weeks ago and I sat up in the middle of the night stirring my tank.

Shawn
 
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incysor

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I would think that running a couple powerheads and a couple air pump/bubblers would keep the tank/tanks healthy and not use too much electricity. I'm not worried about running my return pump at all. But I liked the idea of it being wired up to the car battery, just for the added time that you could keep things running.

B
 
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