Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => New Fishkeepers => Topic started by: paul on February 04, 2013, 07:55:34 PM
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thinking of buying a new solid oak wood cabinet with a tank size of w15in x length 30in x depth 20in,or 147,484 litres,(32.442,uk gallons),my ouestion is just how much a week would this cost to run,house is centrally heated,ext walls have cavity filling,.a 200w tank heater,a AQUAMANTIA EFX 1000'U',EXT FILTER @ 31 WATTS.LIGHTING + AIR PUMP. ANY ONE HAVE ANY IDEA, WITH TODAYS COSTS GOING UP I WOULD GO DOWN A SIZE
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Almost impossible.... but here goes. Assuming the lights, air pump and filter pump add up to 100W gives a total of 300W of electrical equipment.
200W heater (0.2kW) on for 8 hours a day = 1.6 kilowatt hours
31W filter pump on for 24 hours = 0.75 kWHr
70W lights and Air pump on for 12 hours = 0.8 kWHr
In total this gives 3.15 kWHrs per day.
The average cost of a kWHr of electricity is 12.5p, so it'll cost you about 40p per day to run.
Only you can decide whether you can afford this or not.
p.s. Welcome to the forum.
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As Colin said, it's almost impossible. It is easy to calculate the power consumption of the filter and airpump as they're on 24/7; similarly the length of time the light is on is known. But how long is the heater of for in a day? In winter in a cold room, it will be on for hours but in summer during a heatwave it won't be on at all.
The best you can work out is £x for the filter, air pump and light plus some unknown amount for the heater.
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I think you'd be surprised how little power it requires to run a fish tank. I tried to calculate the power consumption of my tank when I first set it up (it is a 240l planted tank that I keep at around 25 degrees, with T8 lights that are on for about 10 hours a day)
The heater is actually on very little; as Sue said, more in the winter than summer, but entirely dependent on the ambient temperature of our lounge.
Although I didn't manage to actually calculate the consumption, we had an energy monitor at the time I set up my tank and it quickly because obvious that our plasma tv and sound system consumed significantly more energy than the tank. I could see from the electricity consumption graphs when we watched a film on the tv, but couldn't tell when the lights came on for the fish tank, for example - or when I did a water change and turned everything off. Running the washing machine, dishwasher, cooking a sunday roast or boiling the kettle to make tea for guests all showed up in the graphs as well.
300W of electrical equipment isn't actually much. Most house hold appliances have their consumption measured in kW.
If you are concerned about electricity bills my recommendation (apologies for the rant but this is my pet hate) is to replace light fittings that have several halogen bulbs. The previous owners of our house have fitted them everywhere, and with 4 bulbs at 50W each, one fitting uses as much electrical energy as my fish tank. We walked around in the dark for a bit, when my husband realised how much they cost to run. I don't replace the bulbs when they die, just move them from one fitting to another so there is only one bulb in each fitting. I will be replacing the fittings when I run out of bulbs!