Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It's a good idea to have a backup plan in case of power outages.

In the case of gravel grow beds, the plants will survive for many hours even on the hottest days without the water flowing. The fish can survive for a few hours without being adversely effected by toxic buildups of ammonia or nitrogen in the system, but the fish need oxygen. If your power goes out then your system will be ok for a few hours so long as you can keep the water oxygenated and one of the easiest ways to add oxygen is through the use of an air blower, pumping oxygen bubbles into the water, they are very cheap, use very little power, and they're widely available.

One great way that I have seen it set up, is to use a 12V blower, a car battery and a cheap trickle battery charger..

The blower runs all of the time powered by the battery, but the battery is being charged constantly by the trickle charger plugged into the mains.. Whenever mains power goes out, there will be hours of life stored in the car battery to keep up the oxygen supply for the fish.

A very cheap backup plan...

I guess you could also get a solar trickle charger from any auto centre. I got one for my Landcrusier.. Cost me $24 and works a treat... this would keep a little bubbler going.

Should work a treat..,.. The bubbler I used, that was almost overkill for my large well stocked tank, was 12W..

i run a relay that only comes on when the power goes off
and 12volt battery to inverter 240 volt and every thing
is back too normal a light truck battery should last long enough
depending on draw
relay cost is $30 assembled very easly
inverter $80
i can get part numbers if anybody wants them
darryl

I have a small harbor freight generator... think it was 99.00, puts out enough juice to run the regular pump and air pump..... last several hours on very little gas.....

jT

Be careful depending on a harbor freight product .

Ya some things are good some are bad...... gen seems to work very well

There are 12 volt high pressure blower that if you block the pressure flap then they can push quite a large volume of water down to 2.8 feet. I forget the brad, but I know that I have posted about it somewhere around here. A 120 volt coil fan relay provides the switch to battery when power fails..

A bit of a stretch, but why not one of those cheap diaphragm based air compressors (no oil model)? $<100USD. It keeps the tank full at all times. Pressure regulator. A inline filter trap to air stones. With a 6gal tank @ 100psi, I would think the air supply would last several hours.

I have one of those with a 60 gallon tank.... but not to sure about being completly oiless

maybe