Filters timed to turn off at night for 2-3 hrs

[PARAGUAY]

Think the biggest.issiue could be keeping the room warm so the tank heater is not on all the time. Filtration is one of the cheapest things to run

 

[Conort2]

well its an aquascaping and terrarium shop so its all about the plants and tropical fish but hmmm that could be doable i guess ill have a think, thats pretty resourceful thinking by the way

There’s plenty of species sold as ‘tropical’ which do much better at cooler temperatures. Danios, barbs, paradise fish, some tetras, gobies, loaches to name a few.

 

[MichaelJ]

Best way to save money on your tanks if your in a cold environment would be to lower the temperature to the most comfortable minimum your livestock will be happy with. If you look at the thermodynamics, water has an extremely high specific heat capacity, which means it takes a lot of energy to heat and since our tanks are not insulated there is a lot of heat dissipation. If your room temperature is 20 C and your maintaining 28 C in your tank, it will roughly take 3 times the amount of energy compared to maintaining 23 C (which will be fine for almost all plants and fish except for some finicky species) so this could be the big one - in rough terms, if your 200 W heater only runs for 2 hours per day vs. 6 hours.... Second would be the light duration (photoperiod) and intensity, and as a distant third would be the filter - unless it's grotesquely expensive to run which most modern filters aren't.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Myrtle]

My lfs has increased their stock of temperate species recently, I've not asked but I assume that it's to both save on heating tanks and because customers also want to save on heating tanks. I think the fact you run a shop makes a big difference to the advice you might get as there are different considerations to those of a hobbyist fish room. Keeping stress levels down for the livestock would be a big concern for me as fish shop tanks (in general, I don't know what yours are like) can be stressful environments anyway.

 

[ian_m]

I once had my filter on a timer, that turned off 7pm till 11pm when we were in the lounge, where the tank is, so that the room was 100% quite for TV watching.

However once or twice the timer came on but the filter pump did not start, just sat there and buzzed, no water flowing. I either heard it not come on correctly at 11pm or found it the next morning when feeding the fish.

Powering on and off and pump started fine. Instructions did say do not run the filter with no impellor (ie not pumping) as there will be no cooling water.

So in the end I run the filter(s) 24/7.

 

[FISHnLAB]

I would just heat your shop to desired tank temperate(23C is only about 2C more then most houses) and turn off all of the heaters...