Kill a watt, Kill-a-watt Fish room tests

[Toby_H]

I've ran 2W per gal for heating tanks for a lot of years...

I'm over half way through testing to see the electrical usage of 2 W per gal vs 4 W per gal...

But I'm going to leave you in suspense for a few more days to allow a more thorough comparison

I'll definitely post the results though...

This is what I started and then the local air temps got into the upper 70s to lower 80s... so my heaters aren't on at all which makes any kind of comparison impossible.

I suspect I'll start running the Air Conditioner in the next day or so which will again allow the comparison to continue.

I will say that I was fairly surprised by the results I've found thus far, but they are not far enough to be considered conclusive so I don't want to leak them and mislead anyone

 

[12 Volt Man]

one thing that is important is how to define efficiency.

in a perfect world, 4wpg will heat a tank faster than 2wpg, so in that sense it could be viewed as more effiencent.

however, there is the cost involved too. which is more cost efficient?

this will be interesting.

one thing that is important too is to make sure that both tanks have approximately equal circulation and similar placements of the heaters.

1 wpg with great circulation may heat better and be more cost effective than 2wpg on a tank with poor circulation and dead spots for example..

 

[Toby_H]

^^ agreed...

My 'test' is regarding cost efficiency when acheiving a stable temperature...

I always use 2W per gal and my tanks stay very stable at 80*F. Many others use double and even triple the wattage with the same results. So my 'experiment' is to find out which approach saves money long term...

After the money concern is solved I will then have to consider other details such as:
-The more heaters in the tank the more potential for failure resulting in overheating...
-The more heaters used the more the initial investment...
-The more heaters in the tank the more heaters to hide...
-And probably about 2 dozen other individual situations dependant on individual preference...

So my 'experiment' is soley to decide the cost efficiency so each of us have that to factor into the bigger equasion that helps us each to decide what we believe will work best for us...

For reference I'm testing different wattages of heat on the same tank, so flow rates and flow patterns are staying the same in each step of the experiment. Once the AC is running the ambient air temp will be consistent day to day / week to week to allow consistency for testing...

Details to come!