UPS Recommendations For Juwel Lido 120 LED

Hi @CMHW and welcome to the forum. 

I don't have any of my tanks hooked up to a UPS. I'm under the impression that most UPS hold enough power to be able to do something like shut down an expensive piece of equipment correctly, and probably wouldn't hold enough power to keep a tank running for up to a hour. I could be wrong, it may be possible to get "larger" UPS that would, but I think it's unlikely that you would need to with your tank.

I'm sure that your fish would be fine for an hour long power cut. I know that the panic that ensues at the thought of the fish suffering without a full set of fully functioning equipment. I'd suggest that if you are very concerned, then a battery operated aquarium air pump could be a useful piece of kit.

Hi CMHW,

I have two UPS units in my household. One is for my desktop PC and peripherals and is in use right now! The other is currently not in use but is earmarked for my 125 litre community tank. It shouldn't be difficult to provide backup power for your setup as the total maximum load should be of the order of 120 Watts. When the heater is off, this will drop to around 20 Watts. My UPS gear is made by a company called APC. The basic range can be found at https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/categories/power/uninterruptible-power-supply-ups-/computer-and-peripheral/back-ups/N-1nzwthz. You could email APC giving details of your aquarium setup and they would advise their most suitable UPS.

Having said all that, I agree with Littlefish that your tank and its inhabitants would probably be fine for an hour - or possibly longer - in the event of a power cut.

JPC

Hi @CMHW and welcome to the forum. 

I don't have any of my tanks hooked up to a UPS. I'm under the impression that most UPS hold enough power to be able to do something like shut down an expensive piece of equipment correctly, and probably wouldn't hold enough power to keep a tank running for up to a hour. I could be wrong, it may be possible to get "larger" UPS that would, but I think it's unlikely that you would need to with your tank.

I'm sure that your fish would be fine for an hour long power cut. I know that the panic that ensues at the thought of the fish suffering without a full set of fully functioning equipment. I'd suggest that if you are very concerned, then a battery operated aquarium air pump could be a useful piece of kit.

Hi Littlefish - yes I agree and think an hour or two would be ok without a power back up system but we do occasionally get longer outages and I wondered if forum members had UPS setups in general.

Hi CMHW,

I have two UPS units in my household. One is for my desktop PC and peripherals and is in use right now! The other is currently not in use but is earmarked for my 125 litre community tank. It shouldn't be difficult to provide backup power for your setup as the total maximum load should be of the order of 120 Watts. When the heater is off, this will drop to around 20 Watts. My UPS gear is made by a company called APC. The basic range can be found at https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/categories/power/uninterruptible-power-supply-ups-/computer-and-peripheral/back-ups/N-1nzwthz. You could email APC giving details of your aquarium setup and they would advise their most suitable UPS.


Having said all that, I agree with Littlefish that your tank and its inhabitants would probably be fine for an hour - or possibly longer - in the event of a power cut.

JPC

Hi JPC and thanks for your detailed reply. I agree the odd 1 or 2 hour outage is not too concerning but for longer outages, say 5 or 6 hours then it’s a bit of a worry with possible temperature falls etc. Especially at night where the room the aquarium in is itself quite cool. In that instance I’d hope an extra 60 minutes or more if possible might help minimise fish stress levels. Thanks for the APC link too.

I had a 2 hour power cut yesterday just before bed time. I was not too concerned, even if it had gone on overnight... I would not worry too much about temperature personally. I've had heaters break on me and the first I noticed was during the weekly water change as everybody was just fine... I suspect it had been off all week... people often do large water changes with very cold water in winter. This is quite a rapid change in temperature. Filtration is more of a concern... do you have a planted tank??

Not trying to put you off a ups necessarily but from some rapid googling I can only really find domestic units that would give you a small handful of minutes (say 10 mins) of running a heater... this would therefore only last say 30 mins running a heater on and off, and a filter (heater pointless without the flow from the filter) maybe less if keeping lighting on... have you found a better option than this?

The other way of looking at this is inconvenience. A power cuts resets my lighting timer... that's a right pain in the watsit.

RE planted tanks... I'd rather have my lighting powered via ups to keep the plants performing the filtration for me. This would mean a domestic ups could last a good few hours...

Not sure if that helps? I lived in an area many years ago which suffered lots of power cuts like you seem to get so I know how annoying it can be. I remember my mum lost a big chest freezer full of home cooked meals once... Not good...