It is very important that you have a backup system because if the power goes off you need to have the assurance that your fish are not going to die. Power outages are inevitable, this is the reason why you need to have a backup system. A well-stocked system that is filled with fish will not last very long since they will consume all available dissolved oxygen in the water. This is the reason why you need to find a way to obtain oxygen from your water that does not rely exclusively on your main power. There are a couple of things you can do to go about this. One is you can keep a generator or battery operated aerators in handy if and when the power does go off so you can apply your emergency plan whenever things go wrong. However, as Murphy’s law would have if, if assuming power does go out and at that time you weren’t home then you won’t be there to do something about the power failure.
If this were the case then this could only mean that you need to have a backup system that is already thought out beforehand; this means that the backup system you must have has to be automatic. There are two simple ways that you can do this. I like to utilize AC/DC aerators. These aerators are air pumps with built-in rechargeable batteries inside. Usually, these run while they are being plugged into the outlet thereby pumping air through its airlines and air stones into the fish tank. If the power goes out the aerators automatically switch over to the internal batteries and the pumping of air into the fish tank continues on uninterrupted keeping all your fish alive for as long as the life of your battery is available, which is often up to a maximum of ten hours. If let’s say after five hours the power went back on again consequently the internal battery gets recharged.
Another method that is normally used by some people is this; they make their own backup. When making their own backup they either use air pumps or water pumps, they also use batteries such as a car battery, a trickle battery charger, an inverter and a power fail switch. Basically, this second method functions more or less the same way as your AC/DC air pump mentioned above, however, it differs because it is relatively larger and comes in individual components form. The nice thing about this second system is that it can be changed and chopped like you can leave the inverter and use the 12/24V DC components instead when they are readily available. (Click here to learn about How to Start Your Aquaponics System)