hey i'm just wondering what it costs to heat a tank... we are getting some pretty huge power bills at the moment. we live in a big old poorly insulated house. yes we have a big heat pump but i don't believe it could be solely resposible for these bills. 5 or so fish tank heaters and lights running all day and night.. lights aren't running of a night time. plus the filter and air machines aswell

Start by creating a list of the wattages of every components, and how many hours a day they run. We can start working it out from there.

What an even better thing to do, is to do that for everything in your home, and you will gain a better understanding of how much power you are using.

Oh and heat pumps use a lot of power... sure they get marketed as being efficient, they are... but they still use thousands of watts. If its a big one, and it draws say 4kW, then you can bank on almost $1 an hour when you run it. 4hours a day, over a month adds up to $120 quickly.

With our tanks lights and heating are the biggest component... the rest is pretty neglegible.

To give you an idea, my 200L tank with a 200W heater, a filter that draws 25w and 60W of lighting costs around $3 a week on power. and that is sitting at around 26degC

I agree with barnacle there, the heating is definitely the biggest cost, and you have identified a large problem in that your house isnt insulated. One way to reduce this power usage could be to insulate the tanks themselves.

I also find the lights use quite a bit of power, and that is very easily sorted by reducing the time that they are on.

And dont under estimate how much power a heat pump can use, it maybe energy efficient, but if you have it on allot it will use alot of power.

i noticed a drop in power usage when i put poly sheets around the sides and a woollen blanket on top of my big tank, It is in my uninsulated garage/rumpus room.

i recently started saving money on power as well, the company i am already with phoned with special rates for new customers not realising i was an existing customer so i let him tell me what they were and argued with them until them put me on them to. :lol:

get yourself one of these Power Meters and you will know exactly what your tanks use. Its what I, and im sure many of us around here have done in the past.

insulating the tanks will make a huge difference. My power bills were over $600 a month now I have them down to under $300 by insulating and using led's and energy bulbs.

With our tanks lights and heating are the biggest component... the rest is pretty neglegible.

Don't under-estimate pumps/filters, a 51W FX5 running 24/7 would be equal to 150W of lighting running for 8 hours...

right list of heaters, 1 300 watt, 2 100 watts, 1 150 watt and 1 50 watter. so thats 600 watts in total for heating the tanks. yes the heat pump is huge 9 kw.. i know it uses a lot of power and my partner has it on 24/7 quite high but having a $800 power bill in november is a bit excessive.. yes it was a reading and yes they have added what was missed for the esitmates from the last two months but thats about $50 each month from what i've worked out from the contact website. thankfully with the online ontime payments and stoping a paper bill we have a 22% discount. our biggest one was about $950 this year.. for me my partner and a 3 month old that is bloody huge!

Maybe if all the tanks are in the one room it might cut down the heating costs.

We turned off the heat pump for one month, and the power bill dropped $120. How badly does your partner want the room to be toasty?

I was under the impression heat pumps weren't that effective way down South ...

Id say it was the heat pump. It could easily be costing you a dollar an hour depending on whether it is heating or cooling and how hard it is working. Have you had the heat pump for long? Do the maths. It doesnt take long to add up to a lot.

first year i was here the heat pump added about $100 a month to the bill... i didn't have fish then and it was never above $400. mind you i didn't have katie then either and the pump wasn't on all day and night. i think its gonna start being turned off durning the day

There are a variety of heat pumps and they work differently. A friend down here had two heat pumps heating a large fish house and one of them worked during a snow storm and the other was not much use.

With the heaters in your tank, its also unlikey they are on 100% of the time. so you could maybe assume the equivalent of 400w constant power... which would bring you to around $60 a month for heating the tanks. If they are all on the whole time, you could be looking at $90 a month just to keep your hobby warm.

Give us a list of your lights and filters.

I'll put together a simple spreadsheet you can use to calculate your powere usage. You have microsoft excel i hope?

Or if you would like to try work it out on paper,

Cost per month = Watts/1000 * hours on per day * days in a month * price per unit

Example: A 2400W electric heater is on 5 hours per day:

2.4*5*30*0.22= $79.02 per month

http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=48031&hilit=heatloss+calculator

hovmoller's tool above is wonderful to work heating (or in my case cooling) costs. I used it to figure out the size chiller I would need for my 430L native tank.

I turn my heaters off in summer

I turn my heaters off in summer

Why? if the tank is up to temperature, they are off anyway