5 essential electricity saving tips for your Aquarium tank

With the increase in electricity bills, it is smart to take some time to think about how we can save some electricity bill while maintaining our beautiful aquarium. You can start off with carefully selecting of what equipments we use in our fish tanks, the monthly power costs of our system can be reduced significantly if the correct and good piece of equipment is being used.

1 ) Lighting
– Do not use more lighting or longer duration of lighting than what your system needs.
– Use a timer for setting up your daily lighting schedule.
– Choosing the types of lighting carefully. Do you really need a T5 HO or metal head light for your fish only system ect ?
– Consider using LED instead of another lighting since LEDs draw much lesser power consumption than any other lighting.

2) Pumps
– Look at the power consumption when selecting your pumps. Take into consideration the effectiveness of the pump vs the power consumption. Some pump produces the same output but uses three times the electricity.
– Select the correct pump for your tank size. Using a correct size pump with suitable flow rate will reduce the need for using a large pump for a small tank which consume more electricity.
– By using high flow powerheads instead of a closed-loop with a large pump, your power bill can be cut drastically.

 

3) Equipment

– Check the power consumption of your skimmer, as similar to return pump, some protein skimmer can vary widely in the amount of power consumption to get the same job done.
– Use an external skimmer instead of a in-sump skimmer. The powerhead inside the in-sump skimmer gives out extra heat into the water.
– Do not use the necessary equipment for your tank if it is not needed.

 

4) Chiller

Get a properly sized chiller for your tank. Chiller sized too large for a system may cause it to kick in and off too often drawing more electricity and shorten the lifespan of the chiller.

5) Tank

– Opening up your tank top to allow more cooling of your tank will reduce the number of time your chiller kicks in.
– Running a fan instead of a chiller to cool the water.
Keep an eye on your equipment, especially when a piece of electrical equipment is malfunctioning, it can use draw more power than it usually does. Get a wattage meter to check out what types of equipment is using too much power.

Consider investing in a wattage meter to check on power consumption. Not only it is great to see where power gets wasted in your tank, but around the house too. You might be surprised to see that some of your household types of equipment is drawing more electricity than your tank.