Ideas to lower electricity usage in our tanks.

[evoracer]

How can we as reefkeepers lower the amount of electricity we use? I feel that many of us do what we can to only buy aquacultured aquaria and even propagate ourselves, but in keeping these specimines we use millions of kW per year. There has tone ways to lower our collective impact on the planet.

I know there are existing solutions, such as solar power or sun tubes, but for renters or building tenants this may not even be an option.

I would like this thread to explore ideas to light, heat and cool our tanks, and circulate and filter the water, while using less power. Who wants to share their ideas?

 

[ackee]

I use small efficient fans when it's hot, directed across the water surface. Much less power consumption than chillers, and reasonably effective. I also position my lights much closer to the aquarium and use a glass canopy in colder months. The reverse in summer. I use propeller modified powerheads to provide water movement, and efficient pumps for system circulation. These are small things, but I find them useful.

 

[TampaSnooker]

Make sure the ventilation fans are blowing cool air in rather than sucking hot air out. Also, you may not need them in cooler months, depending on climate.

+1 on propellar pumps

Also, I don't like the trend in pointing pumps or returns at each other. Less energy is required to have a circular flow in the tank from the main pump. I like to use a large propellar pump on a timer to add some chaotic flow on 6 hour intervals - similar to tidal changes

 

[sandiegan]

Efficient lighting for the tank (are T5's more energy efficient per watt of light that goes out?). I tend to keep my lights geared a little more towards growth than blue/purple to get more growth out of the same time of running. Energy efficient pumps, like mentioned beforeＩlike prop pumps in a gyre. Choosing a good tank location too, minimizing teh need to heat/cool it can help as well.

 

[PowermanKW]

I live in Colorado so I do have Summer and Winter. One thing I keep in mind is heat balance.

I'm right on the line of needing a chiller. I looked at using an air cooled external pump to get rid of a bit more heat. Yet not all heat is bad. I only need cooling when the lights are on. The rest of the time my heater is on.

We tend to think of pump heat as waste heat, but it isn't a waste if you need it. To go external and loose all that heat in the air when I'm running a 400w heater in Winter to keep my temp up truly is a waste.

I got rid of all the unnecessary pumps. Combined when I could and use an efficient return pump. I use a needle wheel skimmer which uses much less power that my mag 7 on my EV did. I now only need a fan across my tank on a few days and the rest I'm fine.

I guess my point is, if you get rid of pumps to save power, but need the heat and just run a heater more instead, you really are not saving power.

 

[AMW]

At least 50% of my electricity bill is a result of my aquacultured reef tank. So even though I am advocating aquaculture, the amount of electricity I use to maintain my fascination with reefing in essence does contribute to the bigger environmental issues, whether or not I like to admit this. I have tried to justify this, but at the end of the day I am guilty of using much more electricity than I really need to.

 

[wdt2000]

I plan to use a wood stove to help my house/tank this winter, I am guessing it will help some with the electric bill.

 

[scolley]

I'm in the process of planning my next large tank, and this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I'm only in the planning stages, but so far I'm looking at few things...

1) Very well reflected lights. That could be quality T5 fixtures, or very effecient MH reflectors like Lunen Brights
2) Effecient lighting ballasts
3) Energy effecient circulation pumps, leaning toward Vortech
4) 2 part dosing to avoid the pumps for calc reactors
5) And the big kahuna - geothermal cooling!

What have I missed?

 

[AMW]

I'm in the process of planning my next large tank, and this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I'm only in the planning stages, but so far I'm looking at few things...

1) Very well reflected lights. That could be quality T5 fixtures, or very effecient MH reflectors like Lunen Brights
2) Effecient lighting ballasts
3) Energy effecient circulation pumps, leaning toward Vortech
4) 2 part dosing to avoid the pumps for calc reactors
5) And the big kahuna - geothermal cooling!

What have I missed?

Sounds like an excellent plan, Scolley. I will follow similarly in the near future...

 

[300Gallon]

I use the least amount of light that will not hurt the corals. I did not over rate like most people do.

I used 250W HQI DE instead of the 400W SE MH.
I also make sure I only use what I need as for watts. Example is I use 3 Hydor K7's instead of a closed loop.
I use a mag12 that feeds the refugium, Cal Reactor and my return lines.

I have a 300 Gallon tank full SPS. I have talked to several people that have the same size or bigger. They claim they spend about $250.00 a month to run their high tech tanks. I am under $50.00.

 

[lllosingit]

I'm getting ready to setup a 250g 60x36x27 on the main floor plumbed to a 40 gallon sump in the basement that will house my skimmer and macro algae the water will then flow into a 125 gallon refuge. I haven't decided on a return pump but I'm looking at keeping flow around 800-1000 GPH
The short length of the main tank should help for circulation 3x Koralia magnum 8's on timers.
2x175watt 14k halides for lighting so I'll only keep low light coral, I'm also looking at solar tubes in the near future.
I plan on insulating the 125 gallon sump in the winter and the back and bottom of the 250 year round.
My old system was similar to this and my electric bill only went up about $35 a month and everything was happy and healthy.

 

[lordofthereef]

Solar lighting is also always an option. Expensive initial setup but a large energy savings in the long run.

Not sure that the wood stove is necessarily environmentally friendly. Perhaps it will reduce electrical costs, but it won't lower your carbon footprint. In fact, it will probably increase it.

 

[wdt2000]

Solar lighting is also always an option. Expensive initial setup but a large energy savings in the long run.

Not sure that the wood stove is necessarily environmentally friendly. Perhaps it will reduce electrical costs, but it won't lower your carbon footprint. In fact, it will probably increase it.

Well I am not so sure, I thought it would be carbon neutral. The new wood stoves are very efficient and wood is a renewable resource. IMO its much cleaner than oil, natural gas, propane, coal, and most electricity.

-Will

 

[iwishtofish]

I was seriously considering some solar panels to run (or help run) a small (maybe 40g) setup, until it was pointed out to me that I can't afford to do it. If I were wealthy, I'd probably do it just to reduce my carbon footprint. Kind of like buying a hybrid car - it takes a while to make the extra spent money back in fuel savings, and really is more an environmentally-sensitive purchase than an economical one.

I'm in the process of planning my next large tank, and this is a topic near and dear to my heart. I'm only in the planning stages, but so far I'm looking at few things...

1) Very well reflected lights. That could be quality T5 fixtures, or very effecient MH reflectors like Lunen Brights
2) Effecient lighting ballasts
3) Energy effecient circulation pumps, leaning toward Vortech
4) 2 part dosing to avoid the pumps for calc reactors
5) And the big kahuna - geothermal cooling!

What have I missed?

scolley, can you explain a bit your plans thus far for #5?

 

[griffithimage]

I'm getting ready to setup a 250g 60x36x27 on the main floor plumbed to a 40 gallon sump in the basement that will house my skimmer and macro algae the water will then flow into a 125 gallon refuge. I haven't decided on a return pump but I'm looking at keeping flow around 800-1000 GPH
The short length of the main tank should help for circulation 3x Koralia magnum 8's on timers.
2x175watt 14k halides for lighting so I'll only keep low light coral, I'm also looking at solar tubes in the near future.
I plan on insulating the 125 gallon sump in the winter and the back and bottom of the 250 year round.
My old system was similar to this and my electric bill only went up about $35 a month and everything was happy and healthy.

insulating the tank... very interesting idea, would insulating just the back and bottom make a big difference?

 

[Schieby]

1.) Get rid of your sumps.
Gravity will feed them with tank water for free, but it takes serious amounts of electrical power to pump it back up in your tank again.
My tank works pretty good without a sump beneath, or at least try to place your sump at the same height as your tank, so you get it done with a smaller recirculation pump.

2.) Another idea would use the heat of your lightning system to heat the water during the winter months. Of course it is bloody dangerous to us hobbyists to mount an heat exchanger inside a MH fixture.....

3.) Forget about SPS and other inverts with high demand in lightning and water flow. Try LPS, shrooms, zoas and the likings........this will lower your bill. With lower wattage lightning you don´t need a chiller...and so on, see how it can turn into big savings??

 

[scolley]

scolley, can you explain a bit your plans thus far for #5?

There are a number of great threads on it here. Here's a few...


http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=840592

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=836449

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=832370

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=817756

I'm partial to the last one. But either way, the concept is simple... use circulate liquid through the tubing in the ground (under the frost line) around your home to cool the liquid. Use the cool liquid to cool your tank - either by using actual tank water in the tubing, or by using a different closed loop of "coolant" (could be just water) to cool your tank, as the cool tube circulated through your sump... that or similar concepts.

It can get rather elaborate. But for myslelf, I've got an garage dug into a rock shelf that stays pretty much at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, all year round. So my plan is to put a very large salt water reservoir (my salt mix tank - but a big one) in the garage as a heat sink. Then I'll just run a loop from my sump through spiral tubing running through that nice cool tank to pull the temp down. Still working through the details... but the pump pumping the water will use way less electricity than a chiller - expecially if I create a closed loop system vs. running sump water through the reservoir.

But that's a subject much better dicussed in one of the threads posted above. Bottom line - it's a much more natural, and less energy demanding, way to cool your tank.


PS - Clearly I left a LOT of great stuff out of my first post in this thread... many GREAT ideas in this thread. Thanks!

 

[iwishtofish]

There are a number of great threads on it here. Here's a few...

Thank you for the links to those threads, scolley - I kinda wish the third one hadn't ended so abruptly. I thought it was an intriguing idea even if not wholly efficient.

Sounds to me like you have the best plan, though! Would you use a plastic or titanium coil in your mix tank? I suppose there is a big cost issue with titanium these days.

Anyhow, good luck with it - hope you will be posting the outcome.

 

[ctenophors rule]

scolly. if your tank is higher than your water reserve and your sump, then couldn't you gravity feed it? that way a pump were unnecesary making it even greener! if it were two slow you could always use a thicker diamater piping.

just an idea

also, fluidized bed filters can replace sumps/protein skimmers in certain cases, this would redeuce your carbon footprint as well because of the energy your saving with the return pump and skimmer pump. vs. the pump for the FBF (also start up costs are wayyyy cheaper!)

 

[scolley]

Would you use a plastic or titanium coil in your mix tank? I suppose there is a big cost issue with titanium these days.

Anyhow, good luck with it - hope you will be posting the outcome.

Thanks. I'm still in the early stages of planning, so it could easily be up to a year.

Titanium would be wonderful. But the cost is clearly an issue. So my plan was to just do it the cheap way... use pex as the tubing (does heat transfer well enough for sub-floor heating), fill it with glycol (personally am not worried about leaks and it is inert and conducts heat much better than water), and use many loops of it in both my sump and the water reservoir. My future tank is a 180, and I was planning on a 500g reserviour. I've go no doubt that i'll be big enough pull the tanks temp down quite a lot, the real questions are without better heat transfer surfaces, how fast can it change the temp in the sump? And while it can theoretically pull the tank temp down quite a lot (15 degrees), can it sustain a much smaller reduction (say 2-4 degrees) over a long period of time?

Much work an planning to be done on my part clearly... should be fun though.

ctenophors_rule - gravity feed won't work on a circulating system I'm afraid. Since it's a closed loop of coolant (glycol) the most I can do to reduce the energy of pushing that fluid is minimize the feet of tubing beyond what's needed for heat exchange in the two containers (sump and reservoir).

PS - "scolly" is a coral. I'm a different animal.