Motorhome power supply

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Orange Elephant

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Hi

I'm in the early stages of planning to move our tropical fish a long distance. I'm considering using a motorhome to do this so that we can power heaters & filters, as well as move the empty tanks ourselves.

Do any camping experts know how much power I can draw from a regular motorhome's 240V supply? It will be parked - not charging for about 4 hours, then a long drive.

Maybe it might be easier to heat the motorhome interior to 28C?
 
Ahh scrub that idea.

I just spoke to a motorhome hire place. They only get 240V when plugged into a camp site. When travelling, they only have 12V.
 
Orange Elephant said:
Ahh scrub that idea.

I just spoke to a motorhome hire place. They only get 240V when plugged into a camp site. When travelling, they only have 12V.
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once you are travelling you may be able to get a convertor to plug in the 12V to at least run an airpump/filter or something.
 
What are the fish and how long will they be in transit? It is likely that you won't need power at all, just a bit of know how on shipping fish :) which I can help with if required.
 
PaulButler said:
What are the fish and how long will they be in transit? It is likely that you won't need power at all, just a bit of know how on shipping fish :) which I can help with if required.
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See the other thread , more info there. Discus fish.
 
DorsetDude said:
once you are travelling you may be able to get a convertor to plug in the 12V to at least run an airpump/filter or something.
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Thanks, we have a lot of filters to keep going (30+). I'm thinking now of bagging the filter media into separate food-safe buckets & running a battery powered airpump through the media to keep it alive.

The fish are Discus, Orandas & lots of Betta.Splendens (Siamese Fighting Fish).

When posting fish, it's usual to double bag them, add a heat pack & pop them into an insulated box. I know several breeders who if they're shipping fish to shows, will pop the fish into food safe buckets, with perforated lids. This handles the Oxygen situation (Fish will die of Oxygen starvation before dirty water or heat loss). The Orandas are sub tropical, but don't need to be heated, however I don't want the Discus or Betta.Splendens to fall too low in temp. I called my supplier who has suggested 25litre Home brew type buckets. Also he's suggested running the Discus at about 24C.

I think we may be able to heat up a camper van to 24C, removing the need for heaters.

So I think we've got the fish sorted, just have to think about the bio media.
 
depending on where you live a friendly fish mongers or even the fish dept of asda etc might have polystyrene boxes to put them in ,even a tropical fish shop might help .it will take planning i.e is there a suitable tank waiting at the other end ,best time to travel ,best day to travel etc it can become complicated even on a 20 or 30 mile move .
 
Pumps should be able to be run on an inverter from a car battery. Heaters could be too much of a draw for an inverter. Plenty of bubble wrap and/or other insulation wrapped around the travel container should keep a large volume of water warm enough.
 
Thanks for the idea, I just looked up inverters. I would need a Pure Sinewave rather than modified. (I found this with UPS units for the fish tanks.) The filters have impellers which seem to be choosy about mains quality.

Could I run this sort of thing with just 1 car battery? http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/merlin-m-power-12v-pure-sinewave-700w-inverter-n12jt

Thinking now of using heat packs to keep the temp at 24C, Home Brew buckets for the fish with holes in the top & wrapped in bubblewrap.

The inverter would be just for the filters (pumps). We have 4 big 27W filters & about 30 little 4W filters. Total wattage: 228W
 
Nod said:
Pumps should be able to be run on an inverter from a car battery. Heaters could be too much of a draw for an inverter. Plenty of bubble wrap and/or other insulation wrapped around the travel container should keep a large volume of water warm enough.
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Not to mention driving 12 hours in a van heated to 24 degrees C, phew
sweaty.jpg
 
Hmm, yes maybe not so good...

Maybe the motorhome idea would be better because it would be better insulated than a van?
 
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You need one of these...

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Steve.
 
If using the motorhome hang a heavy curtain between the cab and the back, should let you remain cooler without affecting the heat in the rear.
 
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