The Uninterruptible Power Supply is an important and necessary tool for our aquarium.
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It’s not linked to the aquarium activity in itself and due to this it’s often underestimated. After we’ve set the aquarium it could be even in perfect conditions, but we have to worry about the emergencies. As you know each aquarium is connected to the electric supply, so when it is lacking, the existence of the aquarium itself is in danger.
The only tool that can keep the aquarium alive until the electric power comes back is the so-called UPS, the Uninterruptible Power Supply.
Technically the UPS is a simple battery, recharged by an inverter and which has to be set between the utilities for the life of the aquarium and the domestic electric line.
Until here there was the simple part. Now the complex one.
How do we choose it? Are all good batteries? How long has it to last?
The choice of the correct Uninterruptible Power Supply
The first thing to do is to make sure to choose a UPS that supplies electric charge with the shape of a sinusoidal wave. That’s the only important requisite, but unluckily it excludes all the cheap types.
“The electricity dispensed and used in electrical engineering has a sinusoidal-shaped wave because that course directly derives from the behavior of the alternators and from the laws of the electromagnetic induction“.
Cheap UPS originates waves with steps. This is a real problem, because it can lead to the damaging of the pumps. And in addition to this, it would create even more problems to our aquarium due to the usual setting of the UPS upon the return pump (and we’ll see why).
Here you can see the perfect sinusoidal wave (measured by an oscilloscope) of the most famous UPS for aquariums: the Zeus by OceanLife.
The purpose of the UPS is to keep the aquarium alive for the longest time possible. That’s why it has to be set preferably upon the return pump in a marine aquarium. That’s the same for a freshwater aquarium with the return pump, or otherwise upon the external filter, or the pump of the filter.
It’s not necessary that the heater or the refrigerator, or the skimmer or the lighting are connected, not because they’re not important utilities, but because the essential purpose is to keep the aquarium alive for the longest time allowed by the battery we possess. It wouldn’t make sense to keep it at its maximum for a short time.
The return pump is enough to maintain the aquarium enough oxygenated and that’s what we need.
Possible choices on the market
Unluckily the Zeus by OceanLife, (here’s our review that I suggest you to read for general culture) doesn’t exist anymore, as you can read in this article. So we have to choose something still existing on the market.
As we have already said there are just few option and all averagely expensive. My choice, today, would be for the Smart UPS 750 by APC. The price is about 250 euro on Amazon, and you can directly buy it from this link. Obviously there are more expensive and bigger models, it depends on the time you want to obtain.
I’ve just ordered it in order to test it and write a deep review. I will measure the time with various return pumps, so you can have at least some parameters to make a better choice.
