Yeah I dont know if the solar thing would have helped...like you said at night is when you would really need it...but maybe during the day it would help enough to offset some of the monthly cost. As for solar panels...yes they are expensive...is there any kind of tax brake you get or refund for using them tho? Maybe you can run some of your house too to make it more worth while.
770 Gallon Monster Setup
- Thread starter aldiaz33
- Start date
So far, I've actually been pretty disappointed with the Super Dart Gold. The flow is great, it is fairly quiet and it doesn't draw that much eletricity, but the seals keep leaking on me. That's actually why I bought the Laguna Max-Flo 4200...it's submersible (so I don't have to worry about seals leaking), gives me flow very similar to the Super Dart Gold ~ 2,100GPH @ 9' head), it's just as quiet and it actually uses less electricity. I have only been running it a few days, but so far I like the Laguna.
There are some tax breaks/incentives, but the really good one's have expired. I could get a couple thousand dollars in breaks but that doesn't put much of a dent when you are talking tens of thousounds of dollars.
Thank you.
why don't you do some native monsters!!! You could probably do a northern Pike or definitely a large group of HUGE LMB's!
Two things I learned from this thread.
1. Your a dedicated fishkeeper ... props to you brethren
2. Kats on MFK are some haters ... Let this man keep whatever he wants on a tank he spent almost 10 g's on!!!
1. Your a dedicated fishkeeper ... props to you brethren
2. Kats on MFK are some haters ... Let this man keep whatever he wants on a tank he spent almost 10 g's on!!!
Thanks.
Illegal to keep in CA.
Thanks.
Thanks man. I don't take it personally when people tell me what to keep. I try not to think of it as them hating on me, so much as them just wanting to see fish that they like. But like I've mentioned in the past, everyone tells me what I should keep, but no one seems to be willing to help me pay my power bill to keep it heated.
I have (6) 300 Watt Ebo-Jagers coming in on Monday. I'm going to test out the heaters to see for real how much it will cost to maintain tropical temps. If 1,800 watts is not enough then I'm not keeping tropical fish. You're pretty much right about what I've dropped on it and I don't want to add another couple hundred dollars/month to keep it heated.
On another note, someone PMed me for more pix of the gravel vac, so here they are:
Hot dang that is a gravel vac! Hope the heaters work out for ya without breaking the bank in elecricity. Just think....you only have a couple more months of cold temps. Then you can rest easy in the summer and run that gas line out to the shed to help heat the ambient air 
Today I received (6) 300W "Eheim Jager Trutemps." I have had 1,800 watts running in the sump for 2 hours now and the temperature has risen 1.8 degrees (from 60.7F to 62.5F). The air temp in the room is 59F. I have the heaters all set to the minimum (65F) so that I don't increase the temperature too quickly. I plan to crank them up a little more tomorrow.
For every hour all 1,800 watts are running it's costing me $0.61. That doesn't seem like a lot, but if they are on 8 hours a day, that comes out to $146.88 per month (I pay $0.34 per KWhr at the highest tier, which running these heaters will put me in that tier pretty quickly).
Something that's kinda interesting...one of the labels on the heater reads 150W, although it's definitely a 300W heater (It's the same size as the others and I tested it on my Kill-o-watt and it read 290W). Looks like they made an error at the factory and printed the wrong wattage on the heater (see pic below).
Anyways, so I'm testing it out to see if I can keep tropical fish after all. I bought these 300Watters instead of one or two much larger heaters so that I could fairly easily re-sell them in case I decide to stick with cold water fish. Not too many people need huge 1,000 watt heaters, so my thinking was that I could find buyers for these 300W heaters much more quickly than trying to sell a couple 1,000W heaters. They were also much cheaper than the larger units ($155 delivered for 1,800 watts is pretty cheap). If they cycle on for more than a few hours a day to maintain 75F I'm going to put them up for sale on here or on craigslist. I could maybe stomach spending $75/month to heat, but $150 is too much.
I may buy a Ranco temp controller to run all the heaters but I first wanted to see how it went with using the Jager's built in thermostats.
Updates are no good without pix:
Mislabeled Heater: the one on the left reads 150W, but it's actually 300W.
For every hour all 1,800 watts are running it's costing me $0.61. That doesn't seem like a lot, but if they are on 8 hours a day, that comes out to $146.88 per month (I pay $0.34 per KWhr at the highest tier, which running these heaters will put me in that tier pretty quickly).
Something that's kinda interesting...one of the labels on the heater reads 150W, although it's definitely a 300W heater (It's the same size as the others and I tested it on my Kill-o-watt and it read 290W). Looks like they made an error at the factory and printed the wrong wattage on the heater (see pic below).
Anyways, so I'm testing it out to see if I can keep tropical fish after all. I bought these 300Watters instead of one or two much larger heaters so that I could fairly easily re-sell them in case I decide to stick with cold water fish. Not too many people need huge 1,000 watt heaters, so my thinking was that I could find buyers for these 300W heaters much more quickly than trying to sell a couple 1,000W heaters. They were also much cheaper than the larger units ($155 delivered for 1,800 watts is pretty cheap). If they cycle on for more than a few hours a day to maintain 75F I'm going to put them up for sale on here or on craigslist. I could maybe stomach spending $75/month to heat, but $150 is too much.
I may buy a Ranco temp controller to run all the heaters but I first wanted to see how it went with using the Jager's built in thermostats.
Updates are no good without pix:
Mislabeled Heater: the one on the left reads 150W, but it's actually 300W.
