Aquarium Power Cut - How to Keep the Filter and Fish Alive

Hello there, welcome back. In this video I'm going to run through numerous things that you can do if your power goes off to keep your fish tank and more importantly your filter, which in turn will keep your fish alive. Now even in a very well planted tank with a perfect sort of environment, you still need to shift the water around. So in that scenario you would still need a pump, so you would require the power. But unfortunately for most tanks Comparing them to nature, they are very overstocked so they won't look after themselves for very long, even with the water flow from a pump, so you'll require foams to keep the water clear and filter media to keep the water healthy. That needs to be fed all the time, so the water needs to flow over the foams or over the filter media all the time to keep the bacteria that's living on there alive, or at least alive in big enough numbers to process the ammonia and the nitrite, which are the real killers in the fish tank. Now, everything I'm going to show you in this video will be linked in the video description and also in the pinned comment, if I can find it, because a lot of this stuff I did buy probably up to a year ago. When I first had the idea for this video, and then I promptly forgot about it. I'll see what I can find, and I'll put the links in the description. So, let's just work on the assumption that you've got a lightly stocked tank, really well set up, good substrate, well planted, to keep the fish alive, at least for a few days. All you need is a pump. This one is a tiny little pump. And if you notice the end there, it hasn't got a plug on, it's got a USB attachment. That's very important because obviously you're not just going to be able to plug straight into your main socket to get your pump going if you've got no power. You need to provide your own power. These pumps, I think at the time I bought this one, it was only five or six English pounds, may have gone up by now. If I can find this or one very much like it, I'll put the link in the video description. I'll just give you a close-up of it there. I think it's got a roughly 3 metre cable, that's your USB, and the pump itself shifts about 200 litres per hour, which isn't much, but in an emergency situation that is enough. But if you've got an external filter or a hang on the back filter or something like that, or even an internal filter with filter media... You could put that filter media into a mesh bag and simply direct the flow of this pump onto the mesh bag of media. That would keep the water flowing over the media, it would keep the bacteria fed, keep the bacteria alive. So it would in effect keep your filter going even though your main filter was taken out of the equation. As soon as the power comes back on, take all that stuff, put it straight back in your main filter and it won't miss a beat. Obviously in a power out situation would need to supply this little pump with power. So we do have a few options. First of which is like a battery backup power bank sort of thing. A lot of people use these for their phones or like small devices. If they're going camping and so on and such forth. They're not expensive. This one is 20,000 milliamp hours. So it's got a good capacity to it. Just a quick close-up on this fella. It's got a digital readout which tells you how much power it has left. I'm not quite sure whether you can see that. It's saying 100% because I just charged it up in preparation for this video. As the power gets depleted, that will drop. And on the end, we've got two outlets and one input. And hopefully, plug that into there, you should see the pump going. There you go. As I said before, all you need to do is direct that flow of water onto a mesh bag of media from your main filter, that'll keep it alive and it'll keep the fish alive. That's our bag of media there. Just imagine that has come from our main filter, just drop that in, put the outlet of the pump onto it, all the bacteria will still get fed off the ammonia being generated in the tank and this will run for long enough, I mean how many watts is this? Oh dear me, it's only three watts. This is gonna run for ages on this battery packer. Another option is to plug it into a solar panel. This is a folding one. There's numerous other ones available. This one here actually has a battery backup attached to it as well, which is 10,000 milliamps. So it's only got half the capacity of this fella, but it has the bonus of being able to be charged up via the solar panels. So in an emergency, assuming it's a sunny day and you've got no power stored anywhere, you know, your battery backup is dead. You could stick this outside for a few hours, charge this up, bring it in, plug that into there, and you see the pump is going again. Good stuff. Again I'll just give you a close-up of this. That's our battery backup which has also got a solar panel on there and folding out from here we've got all our other panels. That in total is 5 watts. Doesn't sound like much but on a sunny day it charges this fella up pretty quick. And then on the end there we've got two outlets for your USBs and one power input. It always pays to have something like this on standby just in case you go travelling anywhere or just in case the power goes out. They don't take up much space and they do have a decent capacity, you know, you can charge your phone up, you can charge little flashlights up, you can run small pumps. You can also run small air pumps and that's what I'm going to mention next. I'm going to show you two different sorts of air pumps. This one, tiny little air pump, again it runs on a USB. I'm not quite sure how much power this consumes, but it's got to be something like, I don't know, 1.5 to 2 watts. It'll be next to nothing. So if you're looking for absolute longevity, a small air pump is probably the way to go. There's the USB. We've got approximately maybe 2 to 2.5 meters of cable. And then we've got our little air pump that looks like a gherkin. It's got a little carabiner on there so you might be able to hang it on the side of your tank or somewhere nearby and that's the end where the airline goes. Obviously you can just attach an airline to an airstone just to keep the water moving if you want to keep it moving, but if you're running the tank with a filter, which 99.99% of people are, you could run certain types of filters just with the air pump. And for that scenario I would advise getting one of these fellas or something similar. That is the ZIS moving bed filter and I was really pleased when these came out on the market because when I put that first, you know, internal moving bed filter video out probably 10 to 12 years ago, I was praying that somebody would start producing them commercially and the first one I saw was from ZIS, so that's the one I'm showing here. It's got a bit of foam in the bottom. This would normally be filled with moving bed media. Airline goes in here, feeds to the bottom, moves the media, water and air comes out of the top. It's a very simple filter. To be honest, moving bed filters can be a little bit noisy. They're not super effective. Therefore, I wouldn't really advise using this as a moving bed. I think it's just a, you know, it's a useful distraction. It's a bit of a waste of time, to be honest. You're better using proper media. And that's what you can put in here. So remember this scenario here is that we've got a proper filter either externally or internally. It's got foams and media or possibly just foams. We want to keep water flowing over that. So what we'll do, we'll take that off, fill it with media, put the top back on. Any excess media could go into mesh bags in front of the outlet, so the water's just gently flowing over it. Again, that would keep the media alive, or the bacteria living on and in the media alive. And the media in here will certainly be kept alive, because as the water's being drawn in, spat out the top, it has to go over the media. So we'll just stick that on there, plug that into our tiny little air pump, plug the air pump into the battery backup, And it looks like I'm going to have to bring the camera in here because I can't see that on the viewfinder. Okay, so that's it going. Air's being pumped in, it flows up through the filter media and out the top to keep the media alive. If by chance you don't have one of these power banks for like a battery backup, what you could do is attach the USB from your little air pump. ...to a USB extension that was designed to carry power as well as data. They tend to be the better ones, so you don't lose the power between A and B. This one is 3 meters long. You can run that out of the window and you can plug this into... you know folding solar panels or a fixed solar panel just something cheap that you would buy for camping and hang that out your window in the sunlight that'll provide the power it'll feed back to the pump which in turn will feed the air into your filter to keep your media alive for as long as you need it to and a lot of these little solar panels including this one have got two outlets so you could plug your air pump into one of the outlets if you've got another Battery that you want charging, you can plug that into the other outlet and even a small solar panel will be able to charge the battery and have enough power to keep the filter going at the same time as well. When the sun goes in, you can run your pump on your battery. You know, the strange thing is for all the videos I've seen on this ZIS filter or similar filters to the ZIS. I've never seen anybody mention the fact that it could be used to keep your main filter media alive, just with a little air pump. To me that's a pretty obvious use for it and really, you know, thinking as a prepper, that is a better use for it. Because it takes up quite a lot of space in the tank, and as I mentioned before, the moving beds aren't really that efficient. Yeah, when they're established, you know, after five or six months, they'll strip out the ammonia and nitrite, they'll do nought for the nitrate because it's all aerobic. I'd get one of these and just keep it as a spare just in case the power went out and use it as I've just instructed. Now then, on the subject of air pumps, we've got like a hybrid air pump, which has got a solar panel and a 18650 battery in here. Solar panel charges the battery, feeds out to power a filter. Now this is a great idea because you can just put this one outside and run your airline back to your filter. So the sun's shining on it, it's charging the battery, and it's keeping your filter going. I forget where I got this one from, probably Amazon or eBay or something like that. It wasn't much money, and it works pretty well. Let me just get this one unplugged, and I'll plug our little solar one in. That's it. So obviously with this one, you'd either hang it somewhere using the little hook, or you'd just lie it down outside somewhere, and you would angle this so it's flat onto the sun for maximum exposure. Then you'd just turn that on. After you plug your airline in, there we are, little switch on the back, and there isn't much air coming out, but there is some air coming out. That's all it needs. It just needs those bubbles, which you can probably see a little bit better there. It just needs those to be rising through the media all the time. So that's yet another option to keep your filter alive. It's actually quite a big unit because it's got the battery in there as well as the electrics, and it's got the solar panel on the top. That's the switch, on and off, put it on. It does make a little bit of a but it isn't very noisy. And on the end there, that's where you put your airline and that's where it draws the air in. Now I think these are mostly sold for the fishing sort of community. With them having the hook on the back there, you'd hook that over a bucket, angle that to the sun, put your airline into a air stone into a bucket and you'd be able to keep all your bait alive until you wanted to kill it by impaling it on a hook. I'll not get these out of the bag, but this kit actually comes with a USB. For charging it, if you haven't got any sun. It comes with two air stones, a Y-piece splitter, and two bits, no, one, two, three bits of airline pre-cut to size. So you would feed one out into the splitter, and then that would go to each of your air stones. Again, this is something that you would never, ever use until you had an emergency. And if you had an emergency where there was no power and you didn't have something... Like this, you'd pretty much be knackered. This would be static, and it would very quickly pollute itself. There'd be nothing there to keep the filter alive, and for the sake of, what, I don't know, I can't remember how much this was, 10, 12 quid or something, you can keep all the fish in your tank alive. You know, all these options that I've shown you here are really, really cheap. Well, maybe it's apart from the ZIS filter, but even the copies now that are coming out are very cheap. To be honest, they do the same job. So, you could probably get a really good setup for under £30, and that would include the filter, the power bank, folding solar panel, or an all-in-one solar panel and power bank, all your USBs and everything that you would need. To keep your tank alive. And that's a pretty small outlay when you take into account how much it costs for all the fish and other things in your tank. Oh, I nearly forgot about this fella. Now that I've put all the bloomin' air pumps away. This is another option. This, again, there's loads of copies of these. Is the Quan V QS-200A air-driven filter. There you go. That'll look familiar if you've seen... God, what's he called? Aquarium Co-ops videos I'm pretty sure he sells these on his site if i can find them i'll put a link to them again air is pumped in goes down there rises up and as it rises up it draws air in through the foams but it also has the bonus of having two parts on the bottom which you can fill with your filter media so that's another one to have on standby as a standalone filter in a tank It takes up quite a lot of space, you know, but it is a viable option if you just had a little breeding tank or something and you just wanted to run that all the time. And now that I think about it, Aquarium Co-op may actually have the ZIS filters, or certainly a copy of those, on his website as well, so it might be worth checking them out. That would be the better option for me. I wouldn't really bother with that one unless it was something you were running all the time because it doesn't have much capacity for the bio-media. Whereas that one does, you'll get a canny bit in there. Now as ammonia is the biggest killer, which will then turn into nitrite, which is in itself a pretty big killer, especially if it builds up. You can integrate something into your emergency filtration to prevent the ammonia from building up in your water. Again, other products are available, but this one is Ammonia Block from RP Aquatics. Comes in sachets like that. You could easily get that sachet. Into the top of that filter, so that the water is drawn up through all the filter media. Then it goes through your ammonia pad, which has got like a resin which just draws it in and locks it up. That'll still give your media full access to any ammonia that's in the tank first. And then this will skim off any excess. That way you'll be able to... How was I? Well, I was getting wet. What was I doing with that? This is how bad my memory is man. It takes me ages to film a video and if you notice all the cuts it takes me even longer to edit it. Normally takes three to four hours for me to edit a video because I never plan what I'm going to say. I just get some gear and talk about it you know. And it's difficult talking to a camera because there's no feedback. Anyway I think I was probably talking about these pouches. I did show them in the last video when we were discussing about the layout of of the canister filters and also the booster filters this is worth Keeping on hand, I think a set of three pads is 25, 26 quid or something and really these are going to last for a hell of a long time in storage. Well basically they're going to last forever in storage. In use each pad will last about eight weeks so even if your electric goes off for days and days on end this will prevent the ammonia building up to critical levels even if you Even if you haven't got a load of filter media and you've just got say a foam filter, you know? That is a bacon saver. Bye for now. Have a nice day, everybody. Bye for now. It's better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it. And that's what I keep telling my wife when she sees what I've bought in the way of survival gear. Now I'm obviously not saying buy all these things but some combination of these things or similar things will definitely help to save your tank. obviously we've just got a tiny little tank set up here but there's no reason why you couldn't just hang mesh bags in front of a flow to keep a big filter on a big tank alive assuming it's not going to be you know weeks on end you know for a few days no problem at all you don't need big power hungry things to keep your system alive however if you did have a canister filter and nothing else and you wanted to keep that canister filter running on your tank for a long time there is another option. It is not a cheap option but it's a brilliant option and it will also help the power You know, sockets, lights, all sorts of things in your house. Now, this next thing is a very expensive option. If you go for the one I did, there is smaller versions, which I've totally explained how to work and everything in a previous video. I'll put the link to that in the video description as well. This would be the Jackery outdoor solar-powered system. Okay, so I'll just shift all these things out the way. I'll maybe just pull the camera back a little bit, and then I'll show you what, you know, a semi-permanent option would look like. Right, so I've got a mains-powered pump, which I'm going to use this to demonstrate. Obviously, this is way too small for a big tank, but at a pinch, if you were feeding the outlet water from here through mesh bags of filter media from your main filter, it would do a job. It would definitely do a job. That's an Eden 316. I call it the stone cold edition. Okay so this is the Jackery 1000 and the 1000 relates to how many watts of power it stores in here so 1000 watts is basically one kilowatt and that's a lot. If you've got a 25 watt canister filter which is more or less the average for a decent sized canister filter this should power it for around about 40 hours. Forgive me if I'm wrong on that, my maths is terrible. I think it should run constantly for about 40 hours. You could use your folding solar panels, which come with this, put those outside, run the cable inside and charge this up during the day, providing it's sunny and fine, and that would give you even longer. Potentially, you could give your decent-sized tank and the canister filter an off-grid sort of existence with this sort of setup. It is expensive. As I mentioned before, this is the 1000. It comes with two 100-watt folded solar panels. It's just a really good setup. Not cheap, but there is smaller versions available. There's a 500 and there's a 240. Even the 240 would run a 25-watt canister filter for more or less 10 hours, which is pretty good. 500 would run it for about 20 hours. And the 1000, which is this one again, would run it for about 40 hours. That's providing you never charged it up. You know, if you just plugged it in and let it run, that would give you, you know, more than likely enough time before the mains power came on. And really, your tank wouldn't miss a beat. It wouldn't matter if the lights in the tank weren't on. As long as the filter was going, those fish wouldn't know that the mains power was off. Front of here, we've got a couple of standard USB outlets. One is a fast charger, I think, 3.0. The other one's 2.4. So you can run two USB things out of there. You might have a little pump or you might have one of those air pumps that we showed before. That would consume next to nothing on this. My God, this would run it for days on end, probably weeks. One of those little pumps. For a bigger pump, as I mentioned, it would run still for days. A little pump like that, again, would run for days. That's what we're going to be demonstrating this with. Hopefully, you'll be able to see it on. And then on the other side, we've got two standard plugs and a switch to turn it on. Again, it will power this just as easily as it would power your canister filter. So you wouldn't need to fart around lifting anything out and taking the media out and putting it in bags and sticking it in front of a little pump. If you had something like this, you could literally just plug your canister filter into here. And just let it run until your power came on. It's a very good system, but as I mentioned before, it is expensive for this version. The other versions obviously aren't quite so expensive because they're not as big, but then again, they don't have the capacity. It's kind of a question of, you know, what sort of a power outage do you want to plan for? Most of the time, the power's only off three or four hours, to be honest. Most fish tanks, as long as they're not critically overstocked, Won't suffer that much if the electric goes off for three or four hours. they probably won't even notice. But if you've got a tank that's full of, you know, six, seven hundred quid discus, buying a system like this that you could use for other things as well, like camping and, you know, taking in camper vans, going on holiday with and all that sort of stuff, it's not really that much of an outlay. It's literally a couple of really expensive, good quality fish. If you've got marine, even more so, actually talking marine and tropical fish, Heaters will absolutely devour the power. I mean, in a normal-sized tank, say, I don't know, 150 to 200 litres, you generally have, like, a 200-watt heater. This, even though it's one kilowatt storage, would only power a 200-watt heater for five hours. So you can see why it's more important to run the filter, keep the filter alive... than it necessarily is to keep the heater on because it'll drain any sort of battery really quick and i mean the other options that were previously looked at with those little battery backups and the little folding solar panels they've got no chance of supplying enough power for a heater in that situation if you'd expected the power to be off for a long time if you've got Wrap your tank in bubble wrap, put it over the top, try and hold as much heat as you've got in the tank, in the tank, until the power comes back on. Basically, try and avoid using the heater, because that will sap anything, even something like this, very, very quickly. When I say this would run a 200 watt heater for only five hours, that's based on it being on all the time. Of course, during normal circumstances, a heater isn't on all the time, but say your electric goes off in the winter. Your house is going to get very cold pretty quickly unless you've got another source of heat in the house. Say you normally have electric heating, obviously that's off and whatever temperature the room is, your tank is going to very quickly become that temperature. So best thing to do would obviously be if you had like a log burning stove or something. Which I know a lot of people don't now, but if you've got a log burning stove, throw a few more logs on the fire, warm the house up, and then your tank will obviously warm up to the temperature of the room. You won't need your heater in that sort of situation. Right, so I think I've covered pretty much everything that I intended to cover, because I don't have any spare parts lying around. Normally when I film a video, I finish it, and then I go, oh god, there's something else. So I might write that in the description. If I have forgotten something, I will put it in the video description, as well as the links to all this stuff, or, you know, alternatives that I can find in the video description, and also in the pinned comment. If you found this video useful, give it a thumbs up, because the algorithms, for whatever reason, don't seem to pick up my videos. I don't know whether I don't make a flashy enough title, or whatever. I don't know. They just seem to... Sink without a trace, unless they get picked up by you guys and put on forums or Facebook groups or whatever. I'm not in any of those sort of groups, so I'm not exactly the master of selling myself. Likewise, if you want to take this video and upload it to your own channel or take clips from it, be my guest, you know. When I put these videos out, they're basically yours to do with whatever you want. I won't come chasing you if you upload the whole video to your channel. As long as you just leave the video description Intact, so people get the relevant information. I don't care who re-uploads my videos. I actually found something on YouTube the other day on that subject. And I didn't realise it was there because I tend not to look at the back end of the producer's studio, whatever the hell they're calling it now. I think it had something like content claims or content queries or something like that. I clicked on it and there was 260-odd. Other channels had taken my videos and re-uploaded them and I just thought I'm not even going to start going through these and doing them for copyright. Just let them happen. The information is the most important thing to get out. That's why I've started saying just use the video or clips of it for whatever purpose you want. I'm easy that way. Thanks for watching. See you next time. What is this?