How to reduce power used by a reef tank?

[swhobbie1]

Maybe you could run your lights less - not sure what you have in your tank but I only run my dual 150W MH Sunpod 6 hours a day ... to save $ also. The tank is by a window but on the north side so gets dim light but not enough to heat the tank. I have lots of soft, LPS and SPS in the tank. Colors are not great but they are all growing well. Do you really need a chiller ? I put egg crate on my tank and because the lights are only ~ 8" off the tank I have a piece of acrylic about 2" above the egg crate so the water doesnt splash on the MH fixture. I run a fan across the top of the tank whenever the MH are on. The temp in the tank changes less than a 1/2 degree when the lights are on. In the summer the house is A/C though.

[MikeKuriger]

I've never used a chiller either. I was thinking about getting one for summertime, but even then my room never gets over 78 degrees. good luck on reducing that power!

[savanyo]

I've been very impressed with LED technology advancements. I'm sure that eventually LED lights for aquariums will be a great option with their low heat and power consumption. Does anyone have experience with these lights yet. Here is one I found:

http://www.championlighting.com/prod...roductid=83031

[savanyo]

Here are some more specs:
http://www.ecoxotic.com/community/wp...stem_Specs.pdf

[savanyo]

These Ecoxotic Panorama LED modules look very good, which can be attached to your canopy. Each module runs on only 12W. I'm not sure how many I would need. Four will use 48W and 8 will use 96W.

Link: http://www.ecoxotic.com/community/wp...dule_Specs.pdf

[savanyo]

Here is an update. I bought 4 Ecoxotic Panorama LED modules and replaced my two 250W MH. The light output is decent, but I think I would like a little more so I ordered 2 more, but have not received them yet. My measurements show that each modules consumes 15.5W, so all four is 62W. My two MH lights consumed 516W, so that is 454W less. Assuming I run the lights 9 hours a day, that saves me 4kWH/day.

The LED lights put out way less heat and I noticed my chiller was running much less. So I did another 24hour power test of my chiller and it used 0.54 kWH/day as opposed to 3.45 kWH/day the last time I did this test with the MH lights. So that means the chiller only ran for about 1.25 hours vs 8 hours. I should also mention that I changed the chiller set point from 78 to 80 degrees. This is not very scientific since I'm sure the temp in my house was not the same on both those days. But anyway, I'm quite happy with the change. It looks like I cut the total power consumption down by about half.

Based on these calculation, the power savings will pay-for the replacement lights in 8 months.