Tip... Thermal insulation, power outages...   3/28/10
We had an 6 hour power outage yesterday in our rural area because of high winds/300 acre fire.... I noted in your tips on outages to "wrap the tank for insulation for temperature control"... I discovered during insulating my windows at my house that bubble wrap works wonderfully!
Everybody has some bubble wrap but it can also be bought by the yard at hardware stores. Spray the window/glass lightly w/water and put the bubble wrap on w/the bubbles towards the glass. I have had bubble wrap
on some windows (sliding glass door) over 3 months now and it has not come off. All you have to do is peel the bubble wrap off and clean the glass..... Just a tip.... Works awesome!
Donna Carmichael
<Thank you for this Donna. You have saved many aquatic and perhaps human lives. Bob Fenner>

Who's Reply to a Heated Question? Who's Replying Now? Thank you for your reply, <Wasn't me! (hehe seen rocket man?)> One question more, can I do more than guess of how much power an aquarium heater uses? <Sure can, because you can bet your electricity provider isn't> I can calculate the filter and light fairly easily. But the heater it doesn't stay all the time soooo...whether it's just one fish tank or a whole fish room with 40 tanks I've heard of pennies a month to 25 cents a day. I know it's a fuzzy question, my house could be colder than this house and varying from a Nevada summer to a Boston winter that could be quite a bit. Maybe some numbers I could crunch, like the average room temp of 70 degrees and a 10 gallon aquarium with a 50 watt heater would be about 2 dollars a month or 50 cents or whatever kilowatt hour that I could then convert to cash? Sorry to ramble on, can you give me a hand? And funny thing - for a fish room with many tanks, some people hype controlling the room's thermostat, some multiple heaters are the cheapest way to go, besides initial cost of buying all those heaters, central filtration aside. Any thoughts? <Determining the cost if it was run constantly is easy - contact your electrical provider and ask them how much they charge per kilowatt hour. Since kilo = 1000, 50 watts would be 1\20th of this quote, every hour. The best way to measure the actual kilowatt hours used (because as you stated, it isn't running constantly) would be to obtain a watt-hour meter, available from a hardware store, or at www.liveaquaria.com (and it's so cutely name the "Kill-a-watt meter). As for determining whether individually heating a tank or using an external air conditioner instead, it all depends on the amount of tanks, the building size, insulation, outside air temperatures, etc. As you can see, the problem with determining the costs will be the variables. I would use the meter on your house provided by your electrical company to determine this. On a small scale operation, individual heaters will be MUCH more economical. By the way, please use proper caps\punctuation when emailing us in the future, as this email will be archived for others to read>  Thanks again as I continue to research, Jonathan <Very interesting question, was fun to answer. For an absolutely great\hilarious book on electricity, I highly recommend 'There are no electrons' by Ken Amdahl> 

Fwd: heater costs I would appreciate any information on how much power (kw/h) is used by your heaters. I have eight aquariums and am trying to get an estimate of heating costs.  Thank you  <We don't sell heaters... most uses call for 2-3 watts per gallon... kilowatts per hour depend in turn on insulation values, differences in external/internal values... You can hook up devices which will monitor, measure your electrical consumption... or guesstimate how long each are on... multiply the wattage times the time... to get kilowatt hours used... multiply this in turn by cost per kilowatt (see your electrical bill)... to find cost. Bob Fenner>