Multiple Tanks

[alphabetic]

For those who have multiple tanks (large, small or a combination of both) do you find your electricity bills soar because of them? Do aquariums output alot of power?

 

[roseK]

my parents haven't yelled at me for it yet..

 

[Matty P]

lol

 

[Tolak]

From looking at my bills a while back, I'm using about $65 monthly for running all my tanks. All but two are in a smallish, well insulated room that is heated by gas forced air in the winter.

Heating tanks uses the most electricity, most filters pull anywhere from 4 watts for a small hob, to 20+ watts for a larger canister. Compare this to the wattage of a heater, which doesn't run all the time, but from my observations do run 1/3 to 1/2 of the time. Divide that wattage by half or a third, and you will get a reasonable estimate of power usage.

Higher wattage planted tanks will also pull a lot of current, due to the lights, as will many marine tanks. I use one flourescent light to illuminate a few tanks, as I don't do plants.

 

[CFC]

Im running a 16 tank fish room with roughly 800 gallons of water and the electric is roughly £90 a month to keep it running.

 

[Matty P]

 

[Zeoth]

Im running a 16 tank fish room with roughly 800 gallons of water and the electric is roughly £90 a month to keep it running.

Seriously!!! Wow...

 

[Tolak]

Im running a 16 tank fish room with roughly 800 gallons of water and the electric is roughly £90 a month to keep it running.

UK gallons? I've got around 735 US gallons between 24 tanks, plus a 65 & a 72 outside the fishroom for $65 monthly. It helps that the filtration for all the tanks in the fishroom are run off of one air pump that draws 60w. It also helps having all those tanks shoehorned into one room, the room itself is 78-80F.

I picked up one of these a while back; http/www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a..._monitor_review

I haven't had a chance to hook it up to any heaters, as they are an intermittent draw. Figuring out how much something that runs constantly costs is easy, intermittent appliances are tough.

Since the cost of electricity varies by location, posting KW usage would give folks a better idea, but figuring that one would take some work. I could hook this meter up to the 65 or 72 & get a monthly cost pretty easily, I would have to do all the heaters in the fishroom, along with a few canister filters & powerheads seperately, although I could do them in groups off of one power strip.

 

[murphyk32]

I havent heard any complaints from the parents yet, i got a 20g with leopard gecks (using a heat lamp at all times), a 2 gallon heated/filtered (filter uses an air pump), a 50 gallon and a 55 gallon heated and filtered both, plus tv, radio, computer, etc... They prollyjust dont bother sayin nothing tho cuz they love my fishies i do think i have 4 powerbars in use currently tho

 

[piper]

PFK have this handy tool that works every thing out for you.

http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/...rical_costs.php

you need to estimate the time your heaters run which makes it a bit inacurate

 

[fishlette]

i have found my power bill has soared since having all the tanks. there are now 2 marine and 3 freshwater. our bill went from $180 a quarter to $390 a quarter. i just recently bought a reverse cycle air conditioner to install where the fish are so i can take heaters out and eliminate the need for a chiller in summer. i figure what i save on running the tanks will pay for the air con in about 12 months

 

[RiiCKYOMD]

I think these figures are all inaccurate...
Like boiling a kettle is same electricty output than watching a TV for 6 hours...

So really you cant tell you will have to work it out over a couple of months

 

[Tolak]

I think these figures are all inaccurate...
Like boiling a kettle is same electricty output than watching a TV for 6 hours...

So really you cant tell you will have to work it out over a couple of months

I worked mine out by kw usage before all the tanks were running, to kw usage for a more current bill. I am due for recalculating since I added a couple of 150's, that's another 800w of heaters running. The filtration is off of the same air pump, so that doesn't even come into play.

 

[fishlette]

I think these figures are all inaccurate...
Like boiling a kettle is same electricty output than watching a TV for 6 hours...

So really you cant tell you will have to work it out over a couple of months

what figures are inaccurate?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah lots of tanks can definately hike up your leccy bill, the biggest energy users anything driven by a motor (filters, powerheads, pumps) and high output lighting. With 5 tanks running one of which is marine so has a 250w Metal Halide Light and Powerheads galore, and 2 of which are large FW tanks each with 2 big filters on them our leccy bills were up to about £100 a month, now thats not all fishtanks because we were also running an old inefficient chest freezer which has now gone. But the tanks will have made up a big proportion of that and this is a big factor in us scaling back our tanks.

There are things you can do to reduce it though, there's a lot of powerheads coming out now with much mroe efficient energy usage like the hydor koralia range, likewise although it's far from common place there's a few people experimenting with LED lighting which is again much more economical. I'm not 100% sure but I also suspect running 1 large filter would be more economical than a couple of smaller ones.

So if the high bills put you off do some research into low energy usage hardware and you can find a way around it.