Tank Heaters

[BD8]

This is my first post!

Anyway, I have 5 tanks in my house at the moment, and I just bought another with all the kit on Ebay, now I am wandering how much I pay in electricity to run the heaters and filters. I have four Fluval 4s and a couple of Fluval 404s as well as an assortment of 100, 150, and 200 watt heaters. How can I find out? BTW I live in the UK, but I am sure I can gauge it from US numbers....

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[tkos]

Well first you have to figure out how long they are actually on during the run of a day. Generally once a tank reaches working temp it is able to stay at a given temp fairly easily. That is unless your house is really cold, or your tank is really hot. But I know over here the amount is very low and not smething I ever worry about. Is the cost of electricty super high in the UK?

Welcome to the board.

 

[TankGirl]

Welcome to Aquarium Advice! If you click on the button at the top under the AA logo you will see one for "calcs" and there you will find an operating cost calculator. There are other handy calculators there as well, if you are interested.

I have not calculated it myself because I don't think I really want to know!

 

[snapcrackler]

I was thinking about that the other day too. I was wondering how long I would have to sit and watch the light on the heater to estimate how many times it turns on and off in my paricular house with my particular ambient air temp. I was thinking about an hour to get an accurate answer.

So if you have a 200 watt heater and it turns on six times, one minute each time, in the span of one hour, then you have approx 200 watts of usage for six minutes per hour or 144 minutes in a 24 hour period, and 4320 minutes (72 hours) per month. So you have a total of 200 watts of usage for 72 hours per month for that tank. Than just get a maragarita and sit in front of all your other tanks and calculate them, or you could just divide up the wattage from your first calculation in comparison to the wattage of your other heaters.

YEAH!

 

[BD8]

Thanks for the advice!

I just used the calculator, and woah, I was shocked, I may consolidate my tanks down to three at some point. But not yet...and I have been thinking about starting a marine tank too! But hey, there's nothing more calming than spending a few minutes staring at your fish after a hard day at work.

 

[TankGirl]

But hey, there's nothing more calming than spending a few minutes staring at your fish after a hard day at work.

Yep, and all you have to do to compensate for the power usage is to turn off the TV!