tips and tricks to save energy in the summer months

what are your best practices/tips & tricks with your tank when it comes to saving energy in the summer months? (when your a/c is running like crazy)

 

Good question. My main strategy has been to avoid getting a chiller. I decided early on to forgo the top glass to allow more evaporative cooling. This also reduces the amount of light that is absorbed by the glass. So far no fish have made the big jump. Knocking on wood.

 

Have the tank in the basement lol its been working great so far haha.
When it was upstairs I had to use a fan over the tank and one over the sump. Cooled it pretty well but went through a lot of top off water.

 

I just put the kids back onto my 180g. I felt like maybe all the water that was evaporating was increasing the humidity and making the air run more.

 

Lids rather lol

 

That's better. I was wondering how putting the kids on would help.

Ya, I've noticed the drain for the ac seems to be putting out a lot this year. Not sure how much that will affect the ac bill.

 

An A/C has to remove the humidity before it can cool the air... Just another piece of useless info for the memory bank lol.

 

IMOPE, everything is basically a trade-off; what you save in one area is spent in another. CIP: I keep my AC on 72; I prefer a controlled atmosphere, and it prevents my tank from overheating. To help save on energy, I cook on the grill to reduce heat production indoors. What I save on electric and propane, however, is used to buy charcoal. I switched to all fluorescent lighting several years ago which makes a big difference year round, but there's really not much else you can do.

And yes, IMO, if you're on the brink of needing a chiller, you might as well run AC instead.

Because we all keep our kids on our fish tanks, right? lol <j/k>

 

Fans for cooling and since we are on a time of day electrical rate I switch my lighting until later in the day to take advantage of lower rates. I don't get home until later afternoon anyway so no need to run heat producing lights when I'm not home to take advantage of it, now I get to look at things until I go to bed.