Reef nutrition

Rygh's 250 gallon upgrade

Kensington Reefer said:
Get rid of those via aqua heaters!!
If you need I will give you ebo jäger replacements
Just save your self and your reef creatures
Click to expand...

Don't worry, they are on a separate controller as well. So double redundancy.

From what I hear, the quality of the ebo jäger has really dropped since 2009.
So not sure there really is a great heater anymore.

But yeah, they are getting a bit old. Certainly something to think about
replacing, even if I do go gas.
 
I'm glad I have siliconvalleypower. My bill is about 90 a month, and it includes garbage. I have to use PG&E for gas, but gas is cheap. For nine months worth of bills it was 166.
 
Not sure about exactly where you live, or where your tanks are, but it has been an especially cold past few months, so it's no surprise the heating part is high, although IMO that's the most expensive thing to worry about with large tanks, especially if they're connected to an unheated part of the house (garage, etc). Hell my past two electric usages have pushed to around $100 too, and that's with solar panels, cold, with not much energy production = I hate life :D
 
Electric resistance heating is far less efficient than gas heating. Considering the price of gas compared to tier 5 on PG&E I was thinking it might be cheaper to keep the whole house warmer with a gas heater than with the electric tank heaters. Gonna have to try and crunch some numbers. I was trying to use the articles from advanced aquarist and beananimal's bar and grill on heat loss in an aquarium, but the numbers I'm getting just don't add up. Loss to conduction is being grossly overestimated, in the given example there is no way a 75gallon tank with a target of 80F in a 72F room needs 3595BTU/hr (1053watts/hr) of heat to maintain its temperature.

Since you already know how much your heaters are running, and probably when, you might be able to see if it is cost effective to heat the house higher at night, if the heaters are costing $60+/month, that might be worthy.
 
Regarding the solar cells for electricity:
Yes, that is in the long term plan. But two real issues:

1) The wife going "You are spending HOW MUCH???? on that fish tank".
:)

2) It is almost always more cost effective to reduce energy consumption first.
Basically, money on a more efficient pump might be better spent than
the equivalent solar panels.
 
Regarding the heating:

Evaporation is key!
I probably lose around 2 gallons a day to evaporation. I should measure that some day.
That is 16,000 BTU = 5 KWH.
So over half of my heat is due to evaporation.

Interesting idea on keeping the whole house warm.
But might be counter productive. No kidding. :O
The reason is, warmer air holds more water, so there will be more evaporation.
Plus, heating the air tends to dry it out.
So less convective heat loss, but more evaporate heat loss.
Not sure which would be more.

Perhaps adding a humidifier makes sense.
 
Yes the evaporation is a ton of heat loss, that's why I didn't think the conduction numbers were realistic, I figure most reefers are loosing the most heat through evaporation. So if they are equal then the example tank would need 2000watts/hour of electricity to maintain heat, and we all know that just isn't realistic. Far too many variables.

Everything is a vicious cycle huh. I think you would be the first reefer to run a humidifier instead of a dehumidifier near their tank! And you thought our houses were moist enough from the tanks already! Of course that also means that those using dehumidifiers are drying out the air and thereby increasing evaporation and heating costs plus the added cost of the dehumidifier. What a mess.

In other news PG&E has a summer smart rate program where from June1 to September 30th you are charged $0.03 less per KWH for tiers 1 and 2 and $0.04 less per KWH for tiers 3-5. In exchange they have 15 "smartdays" with advanced warning where from 2pm to 7pm you are charged a $0.60 surcharge per KWH on all electricity used. The idea being that they can use smart days to encourage people to use less electricity during peak hours. I'm sure we could use this program, shut off lights, skimmers, or anything that can be off for 5hours and save some money.
 
Interesting about the smart-day rates.
It would be quite easy to turn off the heaters from 2pm to 7pm.
Hmm.

But I really think the answer:
Try to go with solar heating. Cheap and effective, and not hard to DIY.
Then supplement with gas heating.
Then eventually get solar cells for everything else.
 
jellygeee said:
... By the way, cool hawkfish.
Click to expand...
He has a cool personality as well.
Not afraid of me. He always seems to come over, curious about what
I am doing when I put my hand in the tank.
(Likely much to do with stirring up pods and other munchies when I mess with things)

I just hope he does not become an issue when he gets big.
 
Cover the top of the tank? I did it recently to save on heating, no big numbers to impress anyone with, but I go through. A LOT LESS top off water. Used to be maybe 10 gal would last a week and a half, now it's like 3 weeks plus.
 
I had covers for quite a while, they are so hard to keep clean it's crazy. Between the salt creep, Ca Deposits (no amount of vinegar seems to help for very long), condensation, and the glass itself, huge decrease in light penetration. There is also the issue of decreased gas exchange. You could probably measure that pretty easily, just compare pH at night with it covered vs uncovered.
 
Covering the tank could be a seasonal thing too. It would probably work a lot better with your LED setup as well too since there's no worry of warping :D
 
My tank sortof covered.
On one hand, I have the splash guard that covers the entire top.
But I have deliberate air flow across the top.
Air holes on one side, to the exhaust vent on the other.

I worry too much about oxygen levels. Probably overkill.
 
I think that little bit of airflow can make a big difference. Your splash guard acrylic or glass? Still haven't decided how I'm going to mount the splash gaurd on the new leds
 
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