fish room. electricity....

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surfpalmsncycads

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Feb 13, 2010
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whittier ca
so im sick of my electric bill being between 3-400 bucks. my fish room is in the garage like most. i have no insulation only drywall and a metal door that might as well not even be there as far as holding heat in. i had an idea tonight maybe others have done it. the main consumption of power are 25+ 300 watt heaters... they only come on when water drops in temp so how do i keep the temps more steady other than making sure lids are tight and whatnot. i started thinking of wrapping or covering tanks but other than an eyesore it would be a pain in the pooper to do that everytime i left. so i bought those mylar emergency blankets, they come in huge sheets and there cheap. i paid 10 bucks for 8 of them. 84x60 blankets. im cutting them so they wrap around the sides and back and will remain there perm. the front and tops will velcrow on very easily when im not home or asleep. the blankets claim to retain and reflect 90% of heat.

can i get some feedback and other ideas on energy saving. im not going to cut back on fish whatsoever. more tanks more tanks more tanks. less bill! help!
 
Well, you can start by insulating the room you're in and heating it instead of the water. Sometimes you have to spend money to save money. If you need an insulated door, you should install one. Instead of opening the garage door, use a different one. Or move the tanks to a better location. If you can bring the ambient temp to 75 in your garage, you'll find the 7500 watts you're using to heat will be greatly reduced. Setting your heaters to 78 or so in the winter is perfectly acceptable and will help reduce the energy consumption.

Also, you can look into other devices you have running. Are your pumps energy efficient? Have you considered plumbing the tanks together for a centralized system? You can run a whole fish room off of a nice big energy efficient pump.
 
Have to agree with clay the savings are not going to be that great wraping your aquariums in insulation is not the answer. Insulate your garage and add a gas heater to maintain the majority of the heat will pay for itself fairly quick.
 
Just frame out the fish room in 2x4s and wrap it in 8 mil visqueen. Mike D has his fish room like this and it does really well. He just heats the area with a standard heater. His tanks are consistently around 78*. Probably about $100 worth of materials not including the heater.
 
great topic i am in the same situation need more ideas i'm leaning towards a gas or propane heater any suggestions
 
I've kind of woundered about this topic to about building my fish room idea in that I want it to be linked up to the house so that I can sit down and look at the giant fish tank's viewing windows looking into my living room but I've also worried about the humiudy and the fish smell getting into the house so I plan to make the fish room it's own self contained room that would be added to the house like a small back porch or something of that nature.

As for heating it the fish I have are coldwater fish but I would love to have some heaters in it to keep the fish moving during the winters or to prevent the water from freezing sold and messing up the viewing window. I think what could be possible in this case would be to have the fish room be insulated and have it's own small heating system such as if the building is a old building with a radator system I could build a branch line from it to the fish room added on to the building steam or hotwater powered radators that would be in the room above the waterline of the tank to heat the air above the water to 70 or 75 degrees and the large amount of water would then slowlly take in the heat from the air.
 
"I had this problem and this is what I did.
I built a stand/small room around my tanks that are insulated."

Yeah insulating around the tanks and dressing it with wood is a great idea. Glass is very poor insulation, from memory, wood is itself 20 times better.


"I have no heaters in my tanks and they are staying around 72 degrees."

So where does the heat come from? Just the lights and pumps?
 
broken;4703370; said:
I had this problem and this is what I did.
I built a stand/small room around my tanks that are insulated.
I have no heaters in my tanks and they are staying around 72 degrees.


Click to expand...


now thats what i call a fish room..............
 
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