I’m taking a different approach for this week’s column, departing from my ramblings on system concepts and delving into the practical. I’m going to give you my two cents worth on how you can optimize your aquarium to save energy and money ! Yikes! What next from Fellman? Coral fragging tips? Flatworm elimination techniques? Before I get my head examined, I’ll put it on the chopping block and spew some practical advice for a change! When designing and outfitting your reef aquarium, there are a lot of steps that you can take to help save some money and energy. Here are just a few of my personal faves:
1) Refugium lighting: It’s a common practice to employ lighting in refugiums, for growing “purposeful” macroalgae for nutrient export and support of beneficial plankton. Everyone seems to think that you need pricy lighting systems down there, too. I say, NO! You could utilize inexpensive compact fluorescent lights from the hardware store as a primary lighting source. These things are real cheap when not marketed as “aquarium lights”! And best of all, they usually come “standard” with gnarly daylight flavored bulbs- perfect for growing macroalgae!
2) Climate Control: It’s entirely possible, and often more practical to control the temperature of the room in which the aquarium resides. Hatcheries and wholesalers employ this practice, and so can hobbyists! It can net a huge savings over chilling/heating just the aquarium. Personal climate control devices may be employed to keep the room at a comfortable (for you and your animals) temperature range of 76-78 degrees Farenheit. A little bit of the tropics in your own living room!
3) System Pumps: You certainly don’t need to blast thousands of gallons per hour through your sump, so why not employ smaller, more energy-efficient pumps for this purpose? You can shoot for as little as 1 to 2 tank volumes per hour of flow through the sump. Slower flow volumes have the added benefit of fostering greater protein skimmer effectiveness because of the longer contact time with nutrient-laden water. Ehiem and others market some fine pumps for this purpose. If you can overcome the metric hose fittings (and you can, with creative plumbing), these pumps ROCK!
4) In Tank Circulation Pumps: No one can argue with the effectiveness of closed loop systems. But man, they are inefficient, IMO! Many smaller, internal pumps and powerheads are available that can move tremendous volumes of water with very small electrical consumption. Jake is constantly extolling the virtues of the Vortech pumps, and for good reason: They move lots of water with little electrical consumption. By the way, a big no-no in system design is to use a single pump for the water movement within the display, as well as for the return from the sump, so let’s kill this practice now and forever, ok?
5) Go with Gravity: Sir Issac Newton discovered a good thing. By utilizing careful design of overflows and other components of your plumbing system, it’s entirely possible to eliminate all of those small pumps to feed water into equipment such as calcium reactors, skimmers, and other components by utilizing gravity! Water travels from the overflow from the aquarium into a manifold, which is teed off to the various system components.
6) Halides- Stop the MADNESS!! Metal Halide lighting is a proven, effective technology. However, the abuse of high wattage (400 watt or even 1,000 watt) metal halide lighting is pervasive in the hobby. It’s wasteful at the least, and downright detrimental to temperature stability at worst, to employ 400 watt halides over say, a 75 gallon aquairum. The ninties are over, people! Use common sense! 250 watt metal halide systems work just fine over systems up to 30 inches deep. At worst, in system of this depth, a few demanding coral species may need to be placed in the top third of the aquarium under rare circumstances. Use this light source wisely and efficiently. Better yet, embrace T5s or the new LED technology that seems to be changing weekly! On the other hand, if you use high wattage bulbs, you get to buy an expensive chiller! Cool! Another gadget! Mo’ money!
7) A Cool Breeze Never underestimate the power of wind to cool an aquarium! A simple clip-on desk fan can effectively cool a smaller system, keeping it at a manageable temperature. Several fans can have a similar effect on larger systems. The amount of thermal energy that a water molecule takes with it as it changes from liquid to vapor makes it a very efficient coolant in and of itself. Evaporative cooling is a remarkable process that can have a huge impact on your energy bill if utilized correctly. Aim your fan or fans at the surface of the aquarium or sump, where it will agitate the surface. The turbulence of the fan’s output moves the boundry layer of the water surface in a very efficient manner. Yes, evaporation is a consequence, but it’s still cheaper to top off than to buy a chiller in most cases.
Photoperiod Manipulation- While a regular day/night cycle is important to most life forms that we keep, who said that you have to have a 12 hour light/dark cycle? As long as you are consistent with your light/dark periods, why not consider lighting your system for shorter periods of time, while ramping up and down the intensity throughout the light period? You could time your peak lighting period to coincide with “off –peak” electrical demand time in your area, or reverse the lighting period to take advantage of cooler room temperatures. Experimentation will help you determine what type of schedule works best for you.
Ok, ok…enough of this practical stuff…Back to the usual next time! Stay wet.
Scott Fellman
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I would like to add:
Climate Control; many of us dont need anything more than to exit the hot air to the outside and bring in fresh cool air from the outside or the rest of the room. If you vent the hot air from the canopy or if you can employ ducting that draws air directly from the lighting fixtures, you will save youself tons on your central air in summer. Keeping the system seperate from the rest of the house in this regard is a HUGE money saver. So you may want to reconsider using your 'room' conditioning for climate control of a tank. It actually wastes more energy. For example, if you have a sealed canopy, you could have a couple 4" ducts attaching it to the outside with a 120mm fan or two actually moving air. This way, the hot air and humidity are removed from not only your tank, but from your house as well. In addition, using fans to cool through evaporative cooling can easily keep a tank under 80 degrees while the room it may sit in is well over 80 degrees. At the very least, if you have systems with alot of surface area, evaporation, and spray… try to seal off the room that the sump and/or tank are in from the rest of the house, and ventilate it on its own.
Eheims: There are no metric hose fittings to overcome! They are 'dual purpose' for both metric and US standard fittings. For instance, the eheim 1260 has a 3/4" inlet and outlet… you may need to use a few more layers of teflon tape if you want a perfect seal, but its not hard at all. In the EU, they sell 40mm and 50mm drainpipes and p-traps for going under the sink. Those just happen to be the metric dimensions for 1-1/4" and 1-1/2" pipes sold here in the US… same thing, just a different label.
Lighting: Its not about the wattage, but the delivery system. A better reflector like some lumenarc style will help you get away with less wattage. Using halides for daylight, and T5's for blue helps play on their strengths for overall less electrical use but more output. Putting halides on light rails/movers, even for a main display, works great. I tried it, and loved it. And no, having a light move back and forth every couple minutes does not make you dizzy.
Also, the very best LED systems now cant compete with the efficiency of T5's and halide. Sorry, they cant (just go to Cree's own configuration tool and see for yourself). At best, the top of the line Cree XR-E and MC-E units that are white can compete when used at lower currents (it would take about 14 MC-E M-bin LED's to match the lumens of a Ushio 250 watt HQI 10,000K, or with 20 of them you would get the same light for about 110 watts). When you do everything with LED's though, the blues and other colors cant compete, and you end up with a 1:1 efficiency. This will change when the Cree XP-G's come out… according to data it suggests 6 LED's will do what 10 were needed for now. Lets face it, the makers want to make these things for use around the house and in TV's (so perfect white and warm white).
Otherwise, is someone reading my old posts? Lol.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?... over rate&pagenumber=1
Air exchange systems are great. I have a reefer who built this into his tank design and eliminates the dampness and condensation as well as heat. Living in CA's Central Valley, we have hot hot hot summers of 90s to 100s and he actually had to scale his air exchange back a bit since it was getting too cool.
If I owned my residence, I would definitely consider it. Living in an old duplex circa 1940, its tough to do this. I resort to open doors, fans, and a higher temp swing than I'd like but try and make up for it in simple oxygenation techniques.
Good article Scott.
Since my house floats in the mid 60's on all but the hottest of summer days (for that 1 week out of the year we get them), #2 isn't terribly useful for me.
However I don't think I will ever build another tank without staggered lighting intensities, I went from all halides some 10 hours a day, to halides & t5s staggered such that the bulk of the light (halides) are only on about 5.5 hours a day, I even see better colors and coral growth too!
Excellent feedback, everyone! There are so many creative hobbyists out there…If there is a better way to build a mousetrap, chances are, a reefer will find it! Keep em coming…
By the way- great tip on the Ehiems, Jon…forgot about that when I plumbed my tank…I spent hours in the plumbing supply shop trying to figure out what worked…You really need to publish that somewhere as a sticky so that everyone can refer to it…Ehiems are becoming duly popular…Maybe on Brian B's Ocean at Home blogsite? That would be a good topic, right Brian?
Scott
The info on the eheims is on their website as well…
http://www.eheimparts.com/images/product/1260.jpg
I dont know that they are gaining more popularity these days though. In the 90's and up until 2-3 years ago, I would say they peaked, but now there are some great pumps offered by other companies as well. The Oceanrunner pumps for instance… good pumps, and for a bit less. Also, about a year or two ago, they saw a huge price increase to the point I just cant suggest them anymore. As a result, many of the skimmer companies that once used them are 'moving on' as well… take the new deltec skimmers for instance… Aquabees! The Laguna pond pumps… now there is a great pump! Ever since this:http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?... and then distributing the information to the companies that were interested, the Laguna based pumps have really become more popular.
"Oceanrunner pumps for instance… good pumps, and for a bit less"
You crazy, I've loathed that pump ever since I had to use them on a Turboflotor 10,000. I just have no tolerance for pumps that don't restart after power interruptions.
On the 10,000… dont they tell you that you have to drain the skimmer 1/2 way to start it? I know that is true of the T5000 single and twin models. But that is the needlewheel, not the regular pumps. The regular pumps are fine. Im not going to say they are the best… but neither is an eheim IMO. Those Lagunas are the bee's kneez.
Love the ideas for content Scott! I bastardized this article and added my own commentary on it. It was some great ideas and a very well crafted article….i just couldn't resist
http://www.oceanathome.com/energy-efficient-reefk...