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Power Outages



A great source for battery-operated items to help in the 
event of a power outage is mail order sporting goods catalogues,
especially the fishing and boating ones.  Many of the products are for use
in live-wells or pumps and are quite applicable to aquarium use
and usually cheaper than the aquarium industry equivalent.

Cabela's has battery operated air pumps (for use in live wells)
and a battery operated immersible pump that runs on 2 d-cells.
I have used the pump quite often, it is great for water changes,
and probably could keep a filter system running for quite some time.
I don't know how well the 'lifting' capability is (i think the 
proper term is 'head'), put it would circulate water in a tank
very well.  You might have to get Cabela's Marine/Boating catalogue
for the listing (it was very reasonably priced).  

I am constantly on the lookout for products from other industries
that have applications for aquariums.  It seems a product developed
for a particular industry will be overpriced, but a similar product
somewhere else will be dirt cheap (I suppose the equivalent would
be the discussion of T-8/T-12 lights versus aquarium specific lights).

Hope this helps.

Peter J. Kinslow
Englewood, CO 
pkinslow at denadm_ms.ch2m.com