# How much it costs to run a fish tank????



## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

We got our first hydro bill after moving into our new place. It was alot less than I thought it would be. So it has me wondering???? How much does it cost to run a fish tank? Has anyone ever hooked up a "Kill-A-Watt" meter and checked how much power your filters, lights etc are using each month? Than calculated the actual cost to run each item? Im curious to hear.

Thanks in advance


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## macframalama (Apr 17, 2012)

I dont think it is that much because i have 11 of them going , lights on a min of 12hr/day and my hydro is like 250 / month, for a fdamily of 7 and the laundry ,ac,hot water tank , ect ect they cant cost that much to run


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## jbyoung00008 (May 16, 2011)

macframalama said:


> I dont think it is that much because i have 11 of them going , lights on a min of 12hr/day and my hydro is like 250 / month, for a fdamily of 7 and the laundry ,ac,hot water tank , ect ect they cant cost that much to run


$250 a month YIKES. Mine was $46 LOL for 2 people in a townhouse.

I might have to borrow my brothers Kill-A-Watt tester and try to figure it out. Im sure someone on here has tried this already and figured out the numbers.


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## Rastapus (Apr 21, 2010)

Power usage for aquariums is generally low depending on the equipment of course. Heaters tend to be the biggest draw on power but canisters etc are very low.


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## ilam (Apr 28, 2011)

hey justin, filters only run on a few watts.. it's the lighting and heaters that take up energy. I think you can calculate how much it costs using the wattage of your lights and how often its on and since its summer, your heater probably isn't on very often anyway.


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## macframalama (Apr 17, 2012)

i think the key part to my insane hydro is 7 people , 6 bd room house, laundry, baths, you know hot water tank ect , but i didnt see any drastic jump when i put up all my tanks, but who knows i still doubt they draw too much


jbyoung00008 said:


> $250 a month YIKES. Mine was $46 LOL for 2 people in a townhouse.
> 
> I might have to borrow my brothers Kill-A-Watt tester and try to figure it out. Im sure someone on here has tried this already and figured out the numbers.


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## Adz1 (Apr 21, 2010)

My wife says my tank sent our bill up $10 a month.


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## juicebox (Jun 14, 2010)

Try running 1500 Watts of lights plus chiller, pumps, etc.


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## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

A big sw tank will have a far higher power draw than a fw tank, mainly because of the powerful lights and return pump/skimmer pumps. I use Eheim canister filters & LED lights on my fw tanks and they pretty much use only a few bucks worth of electricity. I have 4 little fw tanks and a koi "pond" outside but all their filters and lights are very energy efficient. In the winter, when the heaters come on a bit more, power consumption will rise a bit. I also have a 60g sw cube reef tank and a 165g reef tank and each draws more power than all my fw tanks combined.

At one point, I was running almost 1000g of sw reef tanks, with 3x250w and 7x150w metal halides, not to mention 3x90w return pumps.


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