Neptune Aquatics

Peter's Garage Tank

How can you tell how much your reef tank uses compared to general household use?


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You can always plug stuff into a killawatt meter. If you have a lot of stuff plugged into a power strip or power bar just plug that into the killawatt meter for the 24 hours and that will give you a fairly accurate daily usage , only heaters will make that vary much. when you have multiple plugs it becomes a bit more difficult , but just do the math on things. hours on times watts divided by 1000 gives a decent enough number for daily usage, multiply that by 30 to extrapolate a whole bill worth. e.g. pumps are always on so if a pump is 50watts. 24hrs x 50watts/1000 = 1.2kWh, then just do that with everything, heaters are harder to gauge since house temp comes into play, LED lighs too especially if they are more than on/off style. those hooking up to killawatt meter for 24 hrs makes the most sense.

But that one 50w pump over a month is 36kWh which depending on which tier you are in can cost you anywhere from 6 to 16 dollars a month to run
 
You can always plug stuff into a killawatt meter. If you have a lot of stuff plugged into a power strip or power bar just plug that into the killawatt meter for the 24 hours and that will give you a fairly accurate daily usage , only heaters will make that vary much. when you have multiple plugs it becomes a bit more difficult , but just do the math on things. hours on times watts divided by 1000 gives a decent enough number for daily usage, multiply that by 30 to extrapolate a whole bill worth. e.g. pumps are always on so if a pump is 50watts. 24hrs x 50watts/1000 = 1.2kWh, then just do that with everything, heaters are harder to gauge since house temp comes into play, LED lighs too especially if they are more than on/off style. those hooking up to killawatt meter for 24 hrs makes the most sense.

But that one 50w pump over a month is 36kWh which depending on which tier you are in can cost you anywhere from 6 to 16 dollars a month to run
Just reading all that math gives me a migrane
 
Get a smart WiFi plug like wemo or eufy they give me report on different plug like this

1bdf7bda578f9bf5acd621cfc6399284.jpg


Plus I can get to schedule my devices and on/off with my phone


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Get a smart WiFi plug like wemo or eufy they give me report on different plug like this

1bdf7bda578f9bf5acd621cfc6399284.jpg


Plus I can get to schedule my devices and on/off with my phone


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Wow! 3.04 daily average, how many KWH do you use in a month for your whole house?
 
Great tank bro.. and YOU ARE SOOOOO LUCKY!!!! the wife wants more tanks?! Awesome [emoji16][emoji16][emoji3][emoji3]
Thanks! My wife says it is not fair that I am the only one that gets to enjoy the garage tank, so she wants a reef in the living room. My issue is I dont want to hear a reef running all night. The freshwater tanks in the L/R get completely shut down at 9pm til 7am. I would like to figure a way to do a remote sump in the garage but all the piping would have to go up to make it into the garage.

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As I work towards a healthier reef, my next step is to see if I can get better colors and some polyp extension. I think a lot of my colors are missing. Case in point - The Vinh - there should be more color than light brown with a light yellow encrust? My tri- colors are predominately bi-color with brown as the main color.
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As I work towards a healthier reef, my next step is to see if I can get better colors and some polyp extension. I think a lot of my colors are missing. Case in point - The Vinh - there should be more color than light brown with a light yellow encrust? My tri- colors are predominately bi-color with brown as the main color.
View attachment 9639

Here's my RR The Vinh. I have mine under high light (around 350 PAR). It could be not enough light or it kind of reminds me of my pale colored acros back in my "starving the coral" days. Are your nitrates and phosphates zero? If so, have they been that way for a while?

Day_0628_20180526_0277.jpg
 
Here's my RR The Vinh. I have mine under high light (around 350 PAR). It could be not enough light or it kind of reminds me of my pale colored acros back in my "starving the coral" days. Are your nitrates and phosphates zero? If so, have they been that way for a while?

Day_0628_20180526_0277.jpg
If anything, I think my tank is a little dirty as I was feeding fish and corals daily. My Phosphates are .25 and my nitrates are less than 5 (keep in mind these are with API color match tests) To work on getting the phosphates down, I have reduced the carbon dosing by 20%, reduced Red Sea A&B by 1/2, reduced Coral Frenzy by 75% and reduced fish feeding by 1/2. I started using an old powerhead as a hand-held blower to blow the corals/rock/cryptic refuge to re-suspend all the crap and get it out. I will begin dosing Zeovit this week. Next to add into my system will be a carbon reactor.
Cheers! Mark
 
Had a little time after work so I added filter socks to both of my returns, ordered a small reactor with pump and a gallon of Rox .8 carbon
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Your corals look pretty healthy to me, growing and encrusting fast right? The bonsai you gave me was meaty and had a lot of nice pods living in the plug. I didn’t see any parasites that could irritate the coral and cause the polyps to close. Maybe you just have the high growth regime with high alk and nutrients where you would expect extra zooxanthellae (some extra brown color). I think I have the ULNS regime with good color and PE but growth is slowish, I feed reef roids and Acropower and feed the fish a lot just to make sure they get some fuel. I wonder if PE is better in ULNS systems because corals are hungry and feel the need to catch their food to grow? If corals are getting enough fuel from nitrate in the water they’re probably safer keeping their polyps closed where fish can’t nip at them?

I’m keeping an eye on your bonsai’s to see if they “turn into” Garfs in my tank :) they look pretty similar to my Garf and I might put them next to each other to see if they fuse...
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