Lowering Electrical bill, but needing to keep my rays comfortable

[runninlow]

I bred and kept rays for 10+ yrs at 74-76 degrees. Sounds like ur more than fine to cut ur temps a bit. As others have noted, insulation can help. I would say the most important is to have good tight fitting lids on everything (tanks/sumps) also to trap ur heat in and keep it there. Twin wall poly carb works great for lids and insulating the top. Again, i never had an issue with 74-76 degrees. In winter some of my tanks would drop to 72. Feeding slows a bit there as well as digestion but they didn’t miss a beat new borns to adults. 74 was my “ideal” winter temp to keep digestion and activity levels “normal”. Been in the hobby 25+ yrs… anything over 78 degrees is bath water and unnecessary IMO lol… theres an old thread on here somewhere about rays and temperature. The thread contained a study that found the rivers rays were collected in were much lower temp than anyone would have guessed. It noted the shallow slack waters might have been 78-80 due to the sun, but the rest of the river down to the bottom were as low as 68 degrees.

Thank you so much for this, ill drop the temp and see how everything goes, i figure it would be ok at lower temps. Ive order ray from over seas and the water temp they come over in is 60 and lower and the rays seems to be fine. Not planning to go lower then 74 but ill start with that.

 

[dogofwar]

One approach would be to enclose the part of the basement with the tanks and heat just that area. My fishroom is an insulated, 2-car-detached garage. I use a split unit to heat and cool it vs. having heaters in each tank.

 

[DB junkie]

I can't believe a big operation like Ray Bio could run that cheap, would guess there's more to it.....

I'm guessing I'm well over 20 300 watt heaters here. I have to do something here too, wanting to massively downsize but that never pans out. Probably be hitting up the hot water heater for heat soon.

 

[jjohnwm]

The 2 125s are 3 side insulated, the other smaller tanks arent. the 485 acrylic isnt as well.
Air pump is located about 2 ft from the ceiling so for sure its pumping warmer air into the tanks, did some testing and it does raise the temp by 2 degrees. My fish room is located in the basement so all year around the basement sits about 65 to 68 degrees. The fish bedroom itself is semi insulated, the testing that ive done is that if i only heat the 485 gallon to 80 degrees. it keeps the room at a steady 72 to 75 degrees plus or minues 1 to 2 degrees during the cold season. All the smaller tank heaters (125 gallons and lower) are set to 76 degrees.
I know for sure that a major cause of the bill is when i do water changes. my little 70 gallon water heater isnt able to keep up when i do 50 percent water changes on the 485. If its set to 78 degrees, after the 50 percent water change the temp of the water drops to 74-75 degrees.
the smaller tanks 125 and lower stays constant since i can water temp match cause i dont run out of hot water.

as for heating the whole room ive tried it several times, if i heat the room to 80 degrees all the top tanks sit at 75-76 degrees the lower tanks sit at about 72 degrees, i still have to keep heaters in the lower tanks since they lose heat. at this point im not sure what could be consuming my electricity

If you want all the tanks at the same temperature, then adding a circulating fan into the fishroom that keeps the air temperature stable from floor to ceiling helps with that. It "feels" counterproductive, to me at least, because it makes me much more comfortable in the room by giving the illusion of cooling, but it definitely mixes the air and helps eliminate stratification.

I recently installed a smallish on-demand heater specifically for the fish room, so that I have essentially limitless water at the correct temperature, and it is more efficient than drawing all that warm water from my old-fashioned whole-house tank-style water heater...so much so that I will be changing that over to a larger on-demand type for all my domestic hot water. When I say "I installed..." I am embarrassed to admit that I had to call upon the services of a plumber friend; the perfect combination of on-demand heater size and mixing valve turned out to be beyond my reptilian brain. Mixing valves are a dime a dozen if you want water for washing or bathing or other typical uses, and have city water pressure behind your faucets. However, getting a small unit set up to provide 75F water...especially when you are on a well and are utilizing a pressure tank for your water distribution, which operates on a relatively low pressure which is constantly fluctuating up and down during delivery...turned out to be quite the trick. If you are on a well, then expect some challenges if you go this route.

Finally...set up your air pump(s) to draw the warmest air possible. For me, that meant an air intake on the wall close to my upstairs wood stove. We get a significant percentage of our heating from a woodstove, and when it is operating the air in its vicinity is very warm. Building an extension onto the air intake from my central air pump, and running a dryer vent hose up to the intake near the stove, works well to stabilize my tank temps; the colder the weather is, the more the stove is used, and thus the more supplemental heat is added to the tanks which in turn reduces or eliminates the workload on the tank heaters.

The downside is that as I move more and more towards cool water tanks, I actually run the (warm) air from the pump manifold through long lengths of air line tubing held against the cold concrete, to re-cool it so that it doesn't heat the wrong tanks.

 

[runninlow]

If you want all the tanks at the same temperature, then adding a circulating fan into the fishroom that keeps the air temperature stable from floor to ceiling helps with that. It "feels" counterproductive, to me at least, because it makes me much more comfortable in the room by giving the illusion of cooling, but it definitely mixes the air and helps eliminate stratification.

I recently installed a smallish on-demand heater specifically for the fish room, so that I have essentially limitless water at the correct temperature, and it is more efficient than drawing all that warm water from my old-fashioned whole-house tank-style water heater...so much so that I will be changing that over to a larger on-demand type for all my domestic hot water. When I say "I installed..." I am embarrassed to admit that I had to call upon the services of a plumber friend; the perfect combination of on-demand heater size and mixing valve turned out to be beyond my reptilian brain. Mixing valves are a dime a dozen if you want water for washing or bathing or other typical uses, and have city water pressure behind your faucets. However, getting a small unit set up to provide 75F water...especially when you are on a well and are utilizing a pressure tank for your water distribution, which operates on a relatively low pressure which is constantly fluctuating up and down during delivery...turned out to be quite the trick. If you are on a well, then expect some challenges if you go this route.

Finally...set up your air pump(s) to draw the warmest air possible. For me, that meant an air intake on the wall close to my upstairs wood stove. We get a significant percentage of our heating from a woodstove, and when it is operating the air in its vicinity is very warm. Building an extension onto the air intake from my central air pump, and running a dryer vent hose up to the intake near the stove, works well to stabilize my tank temps; the colder the weather is, the more the stove is used, and thus the more supplemental heat is added to the tanks which in turn reduces or eliminates the workload on the tank heaters.

The downside is that as I move more and more towards cool water tanks, I actually run the (warm) air from the pump manifold through long lengths of air line tubing held against the cold concrete, to re-cool it so that it doesn't heat the wrong tanks.

Yes, im looking at a on-demand electrical water heater as well, I did also turn down all the heaters to 74 degrees to see what comes about that as well. lets hope i see something different.

 

[Stingray Biogenetics]

Where I live natural gas is cheaper than electricity. I heat the Stingray building with a natural gas furnace. I also use a natural gas water heater tank instead of an electric water heater tank for the main water supply. Tanks are setup on drip systems with Hot and Cold water, during the winter I turn up the hot water rate and turn down the cold water rate (adjust as necessary to maintain the Stingrays tank temperature). I rely on the drip system and the warm room temperature to keep my tanks warm, I do have an electric aquarium heater as a backup but I tend to not let that come on and just adjust the drip system to maintain temps.