So, just how much electricity does an aquarium use..

[Pepere]

Out of curiosity I am running my tanks plugged in to KillAWatt meters to determine how much electricity they use.

I have two 75 gallon tanks, two. 29 gallon tanks and two 20 highs…

I have 2 Kill A Watt meters. I will be running on each tank for a week..

So day two, preliminary results.

On a 29 gallon tanks in my kitchen.

1 dual output air pump using 4 watts 24/7 running UGF filtration.
100 watt aquarium heaters
Co2 enriched
1 weak Aqua L series full output, and a finnex stingray on timer, 9 hrs a day.
1 fluval 207.

About 1.8 kwhrs a day. About $15.00 a month with Maines electric rate of 26 cents a kwhr.


75 gallon tanks.
2 oase biomaster 350s
300 watts of aquarium heaters.
Co2 enriched
2 Chihiros WRGB2 pro 60 cm
2 dual output air pumps running UGF

4.3 kwhr a day.

$33.00 a month.

I will be checking my other aquariums next week

To be certain the tanks are offsetting heating oil use in the winter I would otherwise be using…

Realisticly, I am probably at 9 kwhrs a day in my living unit.. that translates to about 31,500 btus per day being released into my living space.

Once I get a better feel of power per tank, I am intending to measure how much electricity it takes to keep the tanks heated with the aquarium heaters…

It will be interesting to get a feel for just how large a percentage of electrical demand is from the heaters.

I know I use 108 wattsfor 8 hours a day for my 75 gallon tanks lights. 864 watt hours
8 watts 24 hours a day for air pumps. 192 watt hours
32 watts for 2 canister filters. 768 watt hours

That is 1.8 kwhrs a day for lights and filtration..

That would lead me to believe heating the tank is running me 2.5 kwhrs a day…

Think of that if you ever think your battery operated power station can keep your tank heated in a power outage…

I can keep biofiltration going for 24 hrs by dialing down the air pumps to their lowest setting with95 watt hours a day…. Compared to 2,500 watt hours a day to keep the tanks heated heated…

If you have a generator, realize that 1 gallon of gas can make about 3-5 killowatt hours. The true amount will depend on what the load is on the generator. Do yourself a favor and factor 3 kwhrs per gallon of gas. You will much prefer to be pleasantly surprised that your gas lasted longer than you thought it would…

So to keep lights, filters on and tank heated witha generator I would need tofactor 5 quarts of gas a day just for a 75 gallon tank…

Keeping the lights off saves me a quart of gasoline a day…. Keeping the tanks heated with the aquarium heaters would take roughly 3 quarts of gasoline per day….

Your fridge will take 1 quart and a cup ofgas per day. Running your boiler per day will take 1 quart plus a cup. A chest freezer will take 1 quart of gasoline per day…

I will update as I have more data.

 

[gnatster]

Maines electric rate of 26 cents a kwhr.

And here I was screaming all sorts of mean and nasty things in my head at the electric co when mine went from 0.0642 to 0.0858 kWhr.

 

[Pepere]

And here I was screaming all sorts of mean and nasty things in my head at the electric co when mine went from 0.0642 to 0.0858 kWhr

Is that just the cost for the electricity itself? Ordoes it include the delivery cost?

Iirc, national average is 0.17 a kwhr for supply and delivery…
Maine is definitely on the higher side…but there are worse states…

Our standard offer rate for electricity supply is 0.127 a kwhr. We are pretty much at the end of the nat gas pipeline leading to higher costs for the nat gas to run the turbines…

 

[gnatster]

All in at 0.198 kWhr. That includes my portion of the $61 million in bribes and the $19 million fine for doing so to obtain $1.3 Billion bailout.

 

[Pepere]

Being a heavily forested state with noreasters running up out of the southwest, leads to lots of branches taking out powerlines…. Part of what drives delivery costs…those lines need to be repaired and it costs money….

The high cost of electricity helps to offset the lower amount of solar power we can get out of a 100 watt panel…. Solar is getting to look more attractive….

 

[techman81]

OK, you both win. I'll stop complaining about my electricity costs. I haven't really done the math with 4 tanks currently running , all less than 50 gallons, but I have plans for over 10 tanks (yes, I already have all the tanks sitting in wait) so it will be interesting to see how the bill is affected. My water/trash bill has gone up nearly $10 a month so far.

 

[BigWave]

Pro tip, run your tank at night. Most electric companies run discounts at for the late shift.

 

[Pepere]

Pro tip, run your tank at night. Most electric companies run discounts at for the late shift.

No time of use rates in Maine.

 

[Wet Elbows]

Wind power is the future. We just need to line up all the politicians in front of the turbines and have them start talking. Unlimited power.

 

[hamfist]

I'm sure tank cost will decrease considerably for many months in the summer when heating is not required, or only minimally required.
All this costing info is data that I have honestly tried to avoid. So long as my overall elec/gas bill is not too frightening my policy is to ignore how much this hobby is costing me in energy. I'm aware than my 500W heater in my 150g is on almost constantly during the winter. That won't be cheap. Something like the cost of running an electric kettle for 3-4 hours a day I guess. I'm very energy conscious elsewhere, but with aquaria, there are few, if any, alternate low energy ways of doing things. Making sure we use all LED lighting and don't heat our tanks hotter than they need to be is a good place to start.

Solar or wind power are the obvious strategies to counteract cost, but then you have the cost of setting them up, which is not inconsiderable for some of us.

 

[Pepere]

Preliminary testing data is leading me to believe that lids on tanks save more energy due to reduction of evaporation than by insulating properties…

And that reducing evaporation saves more energy than reducing tank temps…


Tests ongoing but I should have more clarity by the weekend…

The math is telling me that every three gallons of evaporation from the tank carries away 1 killowatt hour if electricity with it.

When I installed canopies to my tanks I removed all of the glass and or polycarbonate lids. I figured the canopy trapped a lot of heat, especially when the lights were on, and that a single layer of glazing only provided R1.

On my 75 gallon tank I only lowered set temperature 2 degrees and decided to pull out the polycarbonate twin wall lids I had made and put them back in the canopy.

I prefer the access of not having the lids under there, and not having to clean them, better light penetration, but it looks like having them off the tank costs me about 2 killowatt hours of electricity a day…

That would be $15.00 a month in the winter months…. Or put another way, putting the lids back on looks to be saving me 80% of the energy it takes to otherwise heat the tank with electric heaters…


That is multiple more times electricity than I would have guessed…

 

[*Ci*]

I am another ignorer … I have so many pumps, lights, and heaters going on with 3 large aquariums, a pond turning over 8000gph, basement hydroponics and over-wintering succulents and tropicals under lights, that I really don’t want to know. I just go with “can I afford my monthly bill?”, if yes, then fine and I can consider adding more, if it gets to the point where it is a no, then I will cut back : )
Thankfully water and hydroelectricity are relatively inexpensive here in British Columbia.

 

[Pepere]

I like knowing. Knowing gives you information you can use to make decisions…

Is the enjoyment I derive from this particular tank worth what it is costing me every month?

I definitely prefer not having lids under my canopies,, but after seeing how much they save me on energy they are back in until summer. I will enjoy them out when the bedroomis around 73 degrees…

Literally putting 2 polycarbonate twinwall lids back in place in my 75 is saving me $15.00 a month. Based on the data I have collected.. it is saving enough money I wont be rehoming the Angelfish to drop the tank temperature down…

 

[Pepere]

Day 4 results.



The 75 gallon consumed 1.88 kwhr in 24 hours.



Yesterday while resetting, I decided to unplug my 200 watt heater and just leave the 100 watt plugged in to heat thetank. As a consequence the tank will be slower to come back up to temp, and as such, the number of cycles per day will decrease.



I used 105 watts less electricity in 24 hours from simply reducing the rate at which the tank can heat up.



I am now using 2.42 killowatts less electricity a day on my 75 gallon. That is a savings of 18.88 cents per month. I only reduce the target temperature 2 degrees from 78 down to 76 degrees and put lids on and removed 200 watts of heater capacity…



I ended up installing twin wall lids on all of my tanks under the canopies. In my other tanks I reduced target temperature from 76 to 72. I also unplugged a heater in each tank today as well…



On my 29 gallon tank I am down to 0.95 killowatt hours a day. I initially was at 1.8 kwhr a day for 3 days in a row. Twinwall lid just went on around 4:00 today as well as unplugging a heater.



Looking forward to seeing how many kwhrs I will be at tomorrow night.

 

[hamfist]

Preliminary testing data is leading me to believe that lids on tanks save more energy due to reduction of evaporation than by insulating properties…

Logically it makes complete sense. Its something that had never crossed my mind before though !

 

[BigWave]

Here is my Tank Cost Calculator. Its in Open Office format. Feel free to modify and do what ever with it. All I ask is if you publish it give credit.

 

[Pepere]

Well, since fitting twinwall polycarbonate lids to my 29 gallon and 20 high gallon tanks, I have eliminated the need for aquarium heaters in them.



My living space is 68 degrees in the kitchen and the heat generated from the canister filter was sufficient to prevent the aquarium heaters from activating last night based on energy consumption overnight. Set to turn on at 70 and off at 72.



Since the lights have come on over the canopy the tank temperature has been rising.



In my bedroom with the door closed it was 72 air temp overnight. The bedroom is insulated much best than the rest of the house…. The 29 and 20 are set to at 70 on, 72 off by Inkbird. I get up a few times in the night being 60…. The tanks were never below 73 degrees…. Before I put on the twinwall lids I was still seeing the heaters come on…



Now that the lights are on the tank temperatures are rising…. Tanks are at 74 right now.



I am quite honestly amazed at how big an impact Twinwall polycarbonate lids make in reducing heat loss from the tank…



I will be keeping an eye on it, but I might just remove the heaters entirely from the small tanks as superfluous…

 

[SingAlongWithTsing]

3x netlea at6 pro = 3x ~152 watt = ~456 watts
refugium led = 15.5 watt
led on the 22 gallon = ~31 watt
co2 pump = 6.2 watt
co2 solenoid = 1.7 w

so ~510 watt x 8hrs a day

Jebao ep 10000m = 57.9 watts
Jebao ep 6500m = 52.8 watts
Gyre pump = 3.1 watts
22 gallon hob = 10.7 watts

so 124.5 watt 24hrs

no heaters in any of my tanks