Has anyone firgured your monthly electric bill to run and keep our fish and hobby alive? Is there such a energy wise filter to use? I was wondering if anyone tried converting solar energy to ac and if so if you could share your information to the rest of us. Thank you.........ALOHA........

Hi,
..
To answer your question: brewing green water with natural Sun light. Green water is the best bio filter for gf tank and you get Sun light for free.
It doesn't do mechanical filtration and you still need to do 100% water change every week w/ this method.

I wouldn't really worry about a rise in an electric bill from fish keeping unless you have several big tanks running. I'll check with my mom when she wakes up.

i seriously wouldnt get all worked up on energy consumption. i have 5 filter running at home and the combine wattage of them is not equal to turning on a 60watt light bulb. running your stove or taking a hot shower or using the dryer consume more energy than running the filter year round.

One AQ 110 costs $674.52 a year to run and I have 4 of them running...

AQ 50 & 70 $289.08 per year

My tetra air pump for 100 gallons is $91.

I don't want to keep calculating my boyfriend may see this!

are you sure?? it seems a bit high. my parents would kill me if they found that out

I honestly can say I have not seen that much of a difference in my electric bill in the few years that I have been running tanks and at this time I have 11 tanks and one 300 gal stock tank, and all but one are running two or more filters, lights and pumps. The only time I see an increase in my bill is during the summer months while using the Evaporator cooler, Southwest air conditioning!

how did you get these numbers? i HIGHLY doubt that the energy bill would be that high unless the area you live in have insanely high energy prices. my energy bill is around 40 bucks a month...for everything i use, stove, computer tv etc. thats $480 a year...no where NEAR what you posted.

AQ110 14 watts/hr * 24hr * 365 days = 122.64kw/year * 0.146$/kw = $17.91 a year
AQmini-70 9watts/hr * 24hr * 365 days= 78.84kw/year * 0.146 $/kw = $11.51 a year

energy prices are taken in my area, prices are in USD

i dont know how much it is over there in canada, but STILL i will NOT cost you $674 a year to run a filter. thats $3367 energy bill just on aquarium equipment. i do NOT want to see your monthly energy bill if this has any truth to it

Well, I know that Kat lives in Canada and she may have given Canadian dollars and the rates may be more in Canada, which would explain the quotes she gave.

yeah i see that shes in canada, but still 674.52 Canadian dollars = 609.26761 U.S. dollars.

not much different

Good job on the calculations disaster.....


I have the following:

100 gal
75 gal
50 gal
20 gal
10 gal
Chameleon enclosure
Firebelly toad enclosure

Even with ALL of the tanks and enclosures mentioned above, I am only spending between 20-30 dollars a month (MAX). I even have it worked out with my room mate that When we get the electric bill, I automatically pay 20 dollars to it. Whatever the remaining balance is, We split down the middle. that way, he doesn't have to pay for MY animals.......


IMO, the bulk of the money invested into keeping aquatic organisms is the initial costs of set-up.

My hubby figured it up for me awhile back & to run my 2 tanks (100 gal & 30gal) which includes THREE AQ110s, A Fluval, 2 bubble wall pumps, one 5 foot long double tubed light, a regular aquarium light on the 30......ANYWAY...it only comes to about $25 per month!!! My hubby's exact words were....."that's a small price to pay for the enjoyment you get!!" ((Ain't that sweet!!))

WOOHOO!!

Yeah, the filter aren't the most energy users - what however eats up a lot are the lights! My daughter did an experiment in her science class (or was that physics? ) on what different household appliances use in a month. She included my AC110s and my 2x48 watt fish lights. Big bummer - fish lights were the worst by far...

Bump...

I was given a Kill-a-Watt for the holidays, which lets you measure the power usage of any device in your home. You plug the Kill-a-Watt into the wall and then the device you're measuring into it.

Our fish setup has a Whisper20, Whisper10, and a 15 W light bulb, all plugged into a UPS in case of power outage (actually, only the main filter is on battery power - I figure that he can live w/o the light and secondary filter for a bit, in exchange for more time on the primary filter if need be).

Anyway, I plugged the UPS into the Kill-A-Watt and the power being used varies from 30 to 43 Watts (w/ the light on). It should drop to 15 to 25, of course, with the light off. Assuming a daily average of ~30 Watts that's probably about 20 to 25 kWh per month. With a typical cost of 10 to 15 cents each, thats basically $2 to $4/month for our 20 gallon setup.

... just FYI

A new FYI, I ran a test on our new Whisper 40 air pump, and it clocked in a measely 2 watts. That's $0.25/month or less.

How would I go about figuring out how much energy my tanks use and then how that reflects in my electricity bill?