Large tank Owners chime in?

[Neoz]

I'm going to ask this question and hopefully its not frowned upon. Not looking for exact figures just rough cost.

Other then the initial startup cost which I have covered in all equipment. How can I roughly figure what the cost of maintaining a 300 gallon tank would cost per month with 250 watt Halide lights.

I really have no clue but need to factor that into this build before I go to far.

Is it $250 per month? $350? No ideas..

I know there are a lot of factors such as how frequent I do water changes, Calcium and other additives once the corals get going but just roughly looking is all..

Any ideas from other members that have large tanks.

 

[belgian_waffleman]

are you planning a basement sump? That will add extra electricity costs.

From an electrical point of view take each electrical component, record it's wattage and multiply by the number of hours it's on per 24hrs.
Add all those numbers up, that will tell you how many kWh per day you consume, multiply by 31 and then by the rate you are charged. That is the easy one to figure out.
This would include Lights, pump, skimmer, power heads, controller, fans, heaters, chiller, etc

if you plan on doing a 15% water change per month, roughly a bag of salt, $20 every 2 weeks would double that cost ($40)

additives, replacement bulbs, Carbon, GFO, ?

The harder one, are extra running time on the dehumidifier because of the big pond in the house, extra AC costs in the summer.

You will have to do some math, based on the system you would like to set up and the equipment you plan on using.

Whatever the number end up being add a chunk on top of that as safety margin, for emergencies. (When something breaks, special treatments...)


HTH
Waffleman

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Design and stocking choices, as well as maintenance philosophy, can probably contribute to this number varying by hundreds of percent. It will also depend on what you include (i.e. electricity? impact to your home's HVAC costs? livestock replacements/additions? lamp replacement costs for those 250w mh lamps? budgeted depreciation for major equipment, i.e. pumps or skimmers?)

I don't have exact figures at hand but if I was going to take a WAG I would assume my 360g is costing me between $100 - $200 per month including all costs. At least half of that is electricity. My system was pretty much designed from the ground up to be cheap. I know people with similar tank sizes who spend that much just in food each month, and have operating costs of more like $600 - $800 per month. I'd bet your $250 - $350/month guess is probably the norm for tanks around this size or slightly on the cheap side of average.

Again though a lot of this will depend on equipment selection and overall philosophy!

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

like others have mentioned, the answer to this question is HIGHLY variable and the sky is the limit!
You can POSSIBLY dump an unlimited number of greenbacks into an any aquarium.
So realistically... you need to find out the cost of your electricity and go with the minimum of all factors (ie: hours lights are on, number of water changes, stocking choices, etc.) and then factor in what you will actually plan on doing.

Stocking choice is a HUGE factor. It will affect EVERYTHING ELSE.

Say you did a FO or FOWLR. You might get away with zero to very few water changes annually. IN a 300 that's a lot of savings in saltmix. You could do away with halides. HUGE.

The big long term expenses for a REEF aquarium are electricity and water changes and/or supplementation.

In most cases, a softy reef will be less expensive to maintain than an SPS or mixed reef aquarium.

In any case, I would budget at least $100 per month to run a 300 gallon reef aquarium.

(I wonder how this compares to maintaining a large dog?)

In any case, with a reef aquarium no groomer or landmines in the yard

 

[Neoz]

Somethings I know. It will be a reef tank with some softies and SPS. I like the SPS my wife wants to see movement :lol:.

We did plan on a heavy stock list. So food and water changes will be some costs. We ideally want to have a variety of Tangs. Of course we would check here with the experts on our stock list before buying. The tank is 8ft long so hopefully thats possible.

The man thing we are trying to decide is the lights. Spend the huge amount up front for LED's and save in the long run or use the existing Halides. Because we have yet to look at LED costs on a 8ft tank with SPS. PRICEY if we go with Ecotech Radions. But probably worth it in the long run. If LEDS even grow SPS well? Have to do much more research here.

We never gave any thought to the humidity issue. :hmm2: Never was an issue on our 180 but were talking much more here.

Well I guess I'll have to really crunch numbers for us. This is our dream tank in our new home but don't want the tank to suffer neglect because of costs. We are comfortable with up too $300 a month budget but don't want to go over that for sure.

Maybe we need to go smaller. Time to crunch the numbers.

 

[Lavoisier]

The electricity is fairly straightforward as most of our equipment today comes with watts declared up front.

Watts x hrs per day run x 365 / 1000 x kWh (.09474 for Kansas City peak summer months).

So your MHs on a 96in 300 gal??

4 would be:

250 x 4 x 12hr x 365days / 1000 x .09474 = $415/yr or $34.50/month

6 would be: $52/month

Then figure your pump(s), powerheads, skimmer, and heater(s) to get your electricity costs. Then as the other posts have mentioned you must run the additional costs depending on stocking, water changes, dosing, etc.

Our hobby is complicated but fun to do the planning, math, and solve the problem!

 

[Neoz]

Lavoisier, all that math makes my head hurt. :debi:

How accurate is all the equipment with its rated Watts? My new truck said 20mpg on the highway and that sure doesn't happen. So I'm wondering how accurate the equipment is as well.

So Gary if you believe roughly saying $100 then I believe I should be OK at $300 a month to maintain the tank and have a nice aquarium. Would you agree? Even less if I go with LEDS correct?

 

[pascal32]

I'm around 250 gallons across 4 tanks. with the evap I have to run a dehumidifier upstairs and downstairs. lights for 4 tanks (2x250 halide on one, 4x T5 over 2, 150x2 halide on the last), basement sump, and AC all summer. compared to before the tanks electric is up about $200/month. salt, food etc, probably around 250/month.

I figure the AC offsets the 1200 watts of heaters during the winter

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

LEDs can certainly help - my tank's footprint probably would typically call for 1200+ watts of MH and I am using maybe 300w of LEDs instead. But I really feel you should make the choice based on what you want and are comfortable with, as every type of lighting has strengths and weaknesses and subtle nuances. Though LEDs will pretty much win hands down if it comes to cost. Forget the electrical savings for a minute and add up the lamp replacement costs for MH- with LEDs you will never pay a penny on regular lamp replacements.

Choice of method for creating flow and moving water around can have a big impact, too. A worst case closed loop system for a tank that large might need 700+ watts. A well designed closed loop might need 400. A few prop pumps might only need 150.

Thermal design is important at this size as well and requires careful thought. On the one hand you want good airflow and cooling. On the other hand you want a certain amount of insulation to keel the heat in, as heating a tank this large can take a good 500-1000w of heaters. If you nail the thermal design you may only need A small budget for heating and none for cooling. If you have a bad design you will have 1000+ watts of chillers fighting 1000+ watts of heaters.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Regarding watt ratings- on a quality pump I would believe it. For lighting, the number given is typically a nominal value to designate a class of product, based on the power level specified at the lamp itself. It doesn't account for losses in the driving mechanism or on-purpose variations from the standard spec. For instance, a typical DE MH rig rated at 250w might actually be pulling 350w from the wall.

You can determine exact numbers experimentally with a watt meter.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

design it correctly and no chiller will be necessary.

I'm running 250 watts of heaters.

 

[pascal32]

design it correctly and no chiller will be necessary.

I'm running 250 watts of heaters.

I'll bite . How do you keep cool in the summer? My house used to hit 90 before I had my reef running and before I had central AC put in (all windows blinded, house fan at night). Can you pull 10 degrees off fans? If so how do you handle the heat from the dehumidifiers?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I don't have a chiller either, but my house rarely gets into mid 80's. I suppose you could do the math if you took a few guesses. One gallon of evaporation is about 8,700 btu of cooling. The specific heat of water is 1 btu/lb-F. Saltwater is probably more like .95 but I will use 1 to keep the math easy. Saltwater weighs about 8.5 lbs/gallon. If you have 300 gallons that's 2550 lbs. So for every gallon you evaporate you lose about 3.4 degrees.

Of course then you'd have to talk rates, and you'd have to know the rate that the tank was being heated at vs the rate you were evaporating. Assuming no other inputs or outputs (which is not realistic) you'd need to evaporate ~3 gallons to drop 10 degrees.

Off the cuff I don't think it would be realistic to evaporate enough to keep up with a 10 degree difference vs the ambient environment, which raises a good point. Part of good thermal design for a very large tank becomes managing the ambient environment rather than just managing the aquarium water. Most aquarium chillers just dump heat back into the ambient environment anyways so it's an extremely bad way to chill an aquarium. It's likely far more energy efficient to use a window A/C unit (which is rejecting heat outside the house) or central air.

PS - Gary, I think it's a funny coincidence that I have exactly twice the tank size and exactly twice the wattage of heaters.

 

[Neoz]

Gary I ran my 180 with a 30 gallon sump in a room 10' x 14'. Never used an AC or humidifier. Never had an issue with heat using 2 small fans one blowing across the sump the other blowing accross the tank. They were both hooked to my controller only to come on when the tank reached above 78.

I was hoping to do the same with the big tank but I'm probably naive there. No expierence with bigger tanks. My studies will continue.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

I'll bite . How do you keep cool in the summer? My house used to hit 90 before I had my reef running and before I had central AC put in (all windows blinded, house fan at night). Can you pull 10 degrees off fans? If so how do you handle the heat from the dehumidifiers?

Can one pull down 10F with fans? It probably depends on each system and the aquarists creativity.
I'm an old timer so I've seen many 180's, 220's with (pendant- no fan) halides (400watters) and no chiller. It's the only way we used to run back in the old days! (Chillers were rare and exotic beasts LOL)
One of those aquariums was mine (years ago). It had 4 72" VHO's in addition to 3 400w pendant MH's. The house had no AC. 12 MJ's in the aquarium (!)
Talk about heat.
I tried a chiller... but eventually sold that chiller... even though my target temperature back then was 75F. As previously mentioned, (and as you already know, Pascal) a chiller must vent heat to a remote area or it's a bad choice. In the stand or in the basement, that chiller was STILL a bad choice IMO/IME.
Nowadays we know that it's probably best to run a reef aquarium in the 80-84F range. I still use fans (if necessary) but better yet- I have AC plus the controller turns off halides once aquarium goes above 84F.
AC works to dehumidify so I rarely (if ever) use a dehumidifier nowadays.
My system typically evaporates 2 gallons of water every 24 hours (without any fans) but this is highly variable. Keeping water at the surface moving is one key to evaporative cooling. Two big box fans were the ticket for cooling the aquarium during a heatwave back in the old days and I still keep those fans handy in case of emergencies. (I'm sure you already know all of this, Pascal.)

 

[pascal32]

Thanks! I've personally never been able to pull 10 degrees and maintain humidity control in the house with AC. Then again I could have used bigger fans in more places. Humidity has been an issue for me, without the dehumidifiers or AC I start having issues. Also in times of need I suppose the humidity isn't an issue for a short period.

Nate - thanks for the math on roughly calculating BTUs.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

additionally

additionally

my last house was situated on a hill that always had a breeze flowing through it. Like a giant radiator. The aquarium was an 'island' so there was airflow ALL around it. Humidity wasn't an issue in that house and I never ran a dehumidifier upstairs.

I remember another guy in the city here that solved the cooling issue by having his drains cascade into his sump like Niagara Falls. I'm talking about a 6ft. freefall into a basement sump!
I'm sure he must have been running a dehumidifier.

 

[pascal32]

my last house was situated on a hill that always had a breeze flowing through it. Like a giant radiator. The aquarium was an 'island' so there was airflow ALL around it. Humidity wasn't an issue in that house and I never ran a dehumidifier upstairs.

I remember another guy in the city here that solved the cooling issue by having his drains cascade into his sump like Niagara Falls. I'm talking about a 6ft. freefall into a basement sump!
I'm sure he must have been running a dehumidifier.

The waterfall I would like to see, curious as to splash control and salt spray. Imagine metal in the basement rusts quickly!

 

[Lavoisier]

Lavoisier, all that math makes my head hurt. :debi:

How accurate is all the equipment with its rated Watts? My new truck said 20mpg on the highway and that sure doesn't happen. So I'm wondering how accurate the equipment is as well.

Good question, I phrased it poorly when I said "straightforward." The formula is straightforward but as you point out lots of variables...including what you are paying from one season to another and year to year.

I think de_willie is correct in that the higher quality products tend to have initially accurate numbers but time changes all.

Nonetheless, I think there is value in understanding electrical costs in broad terms as we make our decisions about set ups. None of us are in this hobby to save money but we sometimes have budgets we try to maintain and so electric usage can be a factor in decision such as MH or Leds.

 

[Neoz]

Thanks for the information so far. Makes my head spin a little trying to fully understand everything involved with operating a big tank.

I have to really sit down and understand all the details even like using pumps or a closed loop system. Because I would think having the big pumps such as Darts etc would contribute to even more heat in the room.

And as Gary stated even the placement of the aquarium can and will come into play when factoring all things together.

Guess I should of been planning all this while building up funds and getting the house. Time to really dive in.