heating question (poll)

[rica5tully]

What do you all have your home thermostat set at?

I know this is personal preference, but I always think about the balance between paying to heat the house, and paying to heat the tank. If the house it too cold, the heaters in the tank will run all the time and maybe not be able to keep up. But it also seems silly to keep the house warmer just for the fish!

Right now I have ours at 68.

 

[prugs]

My fish room is the warmest room in the house. Since I set up the 210gal tank, electrical costs have doubled & the gas bill dropped in 1/2.

The highest our thermostat is ever at during the winter is 68f. At night down to 62f.

 

[Red Sea Purple Tang]

House 65 ... Fish Room 72 ... Tank 78-79

 

[nait002]

House 68, tank 80

 

[TropTrea]

It realy depends upon how your heating system is set up and how many tanks you actualy have.

At my old store, I kept the air temp at 80 degrees all year around. This gave me a water temp of around 76 to 78 degrees. Selected tanks then got an additional heater bring them up to 80 or 80 degrees.

When I was breeding bettas at home it was impractical to heat 200 to 300 betta bowls sepeartely. Therefore my Thermostate was moved to the fiswh room whichj was completly insulated and maintained at 80 degrees during the winter. The furnace also had 3 ducts in the fish room (14' X 21") so it stayed much warmer than the rest of the house. Also note we have two furnaces so the other furnace covered the majority of the house. But again when I had Discus tanks or breeding Betta tanks they were also heated to 82 to 85 degrees.

On my present system 310 gallons in the water column and 120 gallon display upstairs I'n just using 4 electric heaters (800 watts total ) . But will probably be upping that for the winter months.

Dennis

 

[srlumaye1]

Summer 82
Winter 78

 

[Peter Eichler]

My tank is in the basement and the air temp is usually around 65 in the fish room. I maintain the tank at 81-83 with 2x250w heaters for about 130 gallons of water volume. My thermostat is usually set around 70 but there is no venting in the room with the tank.

 

[pvtschultz]

My house it at 70 most the time (my wife has a 2 degree comfort zone it seems) and the tank stays at about 78 deg. I have 2 - 175W heaters on top of the tank that run for half of the day (lights) and a small heater keeps it up to temp throughout the night.

 

[TropTrea]

This is an interesting thread since I just found something out when we hit the cold snap.

After the fire they replaced our furnaces and thermostats. Yupe they put in the new ones that change the twmp on a clock. I came home from work and noticed my tank was down to 72 degrees. Room temp at the time was 68 but in browing through the thermostat I found that it was set to 62 degrees during the day time when no one is home.

General rule of thumb used to be 1 watt per gallon per degree temp difference between air temp and desired water temp. So now I'm recalculating for more or bigger heaters. Water temp 78 degrees and air temp of 62 degrees = 16 degrees difference. With 310 gallons in the total system I will probably need almost 5,000 watts of heat. Presently I have 1,000 watts with 2, 300 watt heaters and and 3, 200 watt heaters.

As a better alternative I'll try moving up the air temp during the day time to 66 degrees and add anopther 300 watt heater. That should pull me up considerably on total temp and slow down the temp loss during the days time.

5,000 watts of heaters is simply to much. I should get some added heat from the T-5's even though it nothing close to my old MH's.

Dennis