Electricity - Ideas on Saving Money?

[Deepsouth]

I'm looking on some ideas on saving on my electricity bill. I dont use lights on my aquariums, since I keep Frontosa, which are use to darker environments. This is currently what I have.

240 Gallon

Mag 12 using 110 watts- Wetdry
Fluval FX5 using 50 watts

125 Gallon

Ocea Pump using 55 Watts - Wetdry
Rena XP3 using 18 watts

75 Gallon

AC110 using 14 watts
Ac110 using 14 watts

These combined are using 200KWH per month, which is quite a bit. I'm putting my house on solar, but solar isn't cheap. For a system to just cover these aquariums I would be looking at $3500.

 

[knifegill]

Styrofoam can be painted and attached to the backs and walls of the tank. Tight-fitting lids rock. I also understand that gas is often cheaper than raw electricity, and it may be more cost effective to heat the room than each tank itself.

If any of your tanks are side-by-side, you could easily make a large sump with a split return and one pump. I suspect this would be cheaper than running many smaller filters, but I could be wrong.

 

[Red_Belly_Pacu]

Heaters use a lot of watts. If you really want to save, you can adjust the heater temperature to like 74-76 degrees rather than the high 70s.

 

[knifegill]

240g - WC Mpimbwe Colony - 2m/8f - Living Room
125g - WC&F1 Moba Colony - 4m/4f - Dining Room
75g - Flowerhorn Pair - Son's Room
55g - Male Burundi - Work

For the flowerhorns, lower temps as suggested ought to be fine. I have no idea about 'Moba' or 'Mpimbwe'.

 

[Deepsouth]

We dont have any heaters on the tanks. Frontosa water doesn't need to be the same temp as CA/SA. I'm just wondering what I can do about my filters? Currently 10% of my electric bill is from my tanks.

 

[bob965]

If you're already running with no heaters and no lights, that's about as good as it's gonna get. Filters/pumps use power, there's no way around it.

 

[Toxic Fish 9999]

hamster on the wheel but it seems like youwill need like 15 hamters

 

[vaine111]

Currently 10% of my electric bill is from my tanks.

 

[Pharaoh]

You could always plumb all three of your tanks into one wet/dry system. it would cut you down to one pump and then the misc filters on your tank.

 

[Deepsouth]

You could always plumb all three of your tanks into one wet/dry system. it would cut you down to one pump and then the misc filters on your tank.

Sounds like a great idea, but they aren't close together. I found out what is realling raising my electric bill. It is the xbox/televisions. We have 2 of these. When running one tv uses 450w per hour x 6 hours and the other is using 300w per hour x 4 or so hours. I had no idea that the xbox uses almost 200w per hour. We live on those things with games/netflix etc.