im in the process of setting up my 300 gal freshwater tank with a 125 gal sump/fuge its a 6 ft tank so about 3-4 ft of it will be planted for nitrogen removal while lookin in to all this i realize how much electricity a pump draws and was wondering if anyone ever has or thought about shutting main pump down say 10 hrs a night and using a powerhead or two in main tank for surface agitation and a small power head in the sump until main pump kicks back on the next morning any thoughts thanx ahead of time
cycling pumps off and on (day & night)
- Thread starter saltydog_1
- Start date
Unless you have a pump that is drawing a ridiculous amount of power you are not saving that much energy to see much difference in your bill. Besides like Oddball said, shutting your pump down for that long is going to kill your Benifical bacteria thus have to cycle everything all over again. Weigh that price out.
saltydog_1;672092; said:
Your Biological material are only good for 1-2hrs before they start dying off rapidly and like Oddball says, you would be starting over. Your filter is cultured for the amount of water flowing thru it, so even if you were to shut down every other hour it would catch up to you and limit the bacterial growth. I tried it.
Go for the best & most efficient pump your budget can take, then consider one of these (there are several on the market, check with the pump manufacturer for a recomendation) http://www.power-save1200.com/
http://www.fishyou.com/aquarium-calculator.php Change the cost per kW for your area.
DeLgAdO;672149; said:
And your Dad would have buried you in your tank right?!
Dr Joe
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you can always have a huge Pee in your sump before you go to bed in order to put a lot of ammonia in it?
moxxommox;672249; said:you can always have a huge Pee in your sump before you go to bed in order to put a lot of ammonia in it?
I think you should reference you cross-posts or they're gonna think your really weird...
But you do bring up an interesting piont... small recirculating pump and drip feeding the biological matter.
Would be touchy...
Could be disasterous!
But interesting none-the-less...
Dr Joe
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Yeah you could run two different pumps on a timer, one on one off. I would still try to run your high gph pump more than not, for a few reasons. 1. Collecting and filtering the gunk out of your tank, 2. Improving water circulation, 3. Improving oxygenation. The only problem that I see is that that low gph pump is going to have move enough water that when the water coming into your drip tray is enough so that the water trickels over all your bio-balls. Too slow water flow and some of the bio-balls dry up and you loose the beneficial bacteria.
ok so let me get this straight and im just thinkin out loud here i need ammonia for bacteria in the sump with the water circulating from power heads in the tank and the sump im good on o2 so with an ammonia source in the sump bacteria lives right or am i off the base completely on this and most pumps big enough to turn this thing over like im wanting are pughing 400 watts so by having them off part of the night would save some money like i said im just wondering i saw a considerable decrease in my electric bill when i started turning my pool pump off for 10 hrs a day but i obviously would not put my fish in harms way